India’s Supreme Court cleared the best way on Friday for Rahul Gandhi, the nation’s foremost opposition chief, to return to Parliament and run in subsequent spring’s nationwide elections, a contest that can pit Prime Minister Narendra Modi in opposition to a coalition that includes a debilitated Congress Party led unofficially by Mr. Gandhi.

The resolution reversed a lower court’s ruling that had sentenced Mr. Gandhi to two years in prison and therefore disqualified him from the legislature for a taunting comment he made in 2019 concerning the title Modi.

It was unclear when Mr. Gandhi — the fourth-generation scion and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding father of impartial India — could be reinstated to Parliament. He was disqualified lower than 24 hours after the unique conviction.

Until last year, he had been thought-about an particularly ineffectual politician. In current months, undaunted by his expulsion from Parliament, his facet has managed to collect a broad vary of events into an alliance underneath the acronym INDIA. But they continue to be very a lot the underdog.

In his 2019 feedback, made on the marketing campaign path, Mr. Gandhi had cited a brief record of notorious fugitives accused of large-scale fraud: Lalit Modi, a cricket impresario; and Nirav Modi, a diamond merchant. Then Mr. Gandhi stated — in an apparent slight in opposition to the favored prime minister, whom he typically accuses of wrongdoing — “Why are all thieves named Modi?”

An unrelated man named Purnesh Modi then filed a grievance to a courtroom in Surat, a metropolis within the prime minister’s house state of Gujarat, arguing that the remarks amounted to a prison slur in opposition to all Modis. A decide convicted Mr. Gandhi in March, and Gujarat’s excessive courtroom later refused the opposition chief’s attraction try after a collection of hearings.

But the nation’s Supreme Court, which took solely a few hours of deliberation to overturn the decision, famous that the crime’s most sentence — two years — occurred to be precisely the minimal required to disqualify an elected lawmaker. Defamation costs in India nearly by no means appeal to a two-year sentence.

The Supreme Court stopped in need of implying any foul play throughout the judiciary, nevertheless. Instead, it stated merely that the decrease courts had erred, ruling that no adequate “reason has been granted by the learned trial judge while imposing the maximum sentence of two years.”

The justices did chide Mr. Gandhi, saying that his assertion concerning the title Modi was not in “good taste” and that he should be extra cautious as a public speaker.

When the Surat courtroom issued its ruling, Mr. Gandhi was compelled out of the official residence the place he had lived for 19 years, and his skill to run for workplace in subsequent yr’s election was thrown into doubt.

After the Supreme Court handed down its resolution on Friday, Mr. Gandhi struck an upbeat be aware, albeit consistent with a stoical persona he has been growing in his marketing campaign in opposition to Mr. Modi. “The path ahead of me is clear,” he stated at a news convention, including, “If not today, tomorrow or the next day, the truth will prevail.”

Reactions from his supporters throughout the Congress Party have been primarily jubilant, however not solely. “This is not one to celebrate but weep,” Praveen Chakravarty, an in depth adviser of Mr. Gandhi’s, posted on Twitter. “An orchestrated judgment in a bogus case by a friendly court had to be rectified by the SC, when 70,000 cases are pending. Shows how much India’s institutions are damaged.”

Other social gathering leaders requested pointedly whether or not Mr. Gandhi could be reinstated in Parliament as shortly as he was thrown out in March.

Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which had defended the decrease courtroom’s ruling in opposition to Mr. Gandhi, was sluggish to make any assertion about Friday’s judgment. Hours later, a party spokesman posted: “Rahul Gandhi may have survived this one, but for how long?”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.