Sometimes all it takes is a win. For the Congress, down and out after the Emergency, that moment came in 1978, when the party won a crucial byelection from Azamgarh, turning the tide for the party and paving the way for its revival.

At the centre of this turnaround was veteran Congress leader Mohsina Kidwai, who passed away on April 8. She was an active politician, who was Uttar Pradesh Congress chief at the time of the election, and was at various points MLC, MLA, and a minister in the state government, but it was her victory in the 1978 Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll that will count as her most notable political achievement. But beyond the personal, the significance of Kidwai’s victory lay in how it helped revive the fortunes of the Congress party.

A few months after Kidwai’s victory in the Lok Sabha bypoll, Indira Gandhi won from Chikmagalur. Within two years of the Congress’s defeat in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, the party began eyeing a comeback with its war cry, Azamgarh se Chikmagalur, nahin rahi ab Dilli door (from Azamgarh to Chikmagalur, we are not far from coming to power in Delhi).

The bypoll in Azamgarh was necessitated by developments in........

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