4 min readApr 12, 2026 06:28 AM IST First published on: Apr 12, 2026 at 06:28 AM ISTSometimes 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.AdvertisementA 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 Uttar Pradesh, where, the previous year, in 1977, the Janata Party had come to power after the Assembly polls. There were several claimants for the Chief Minister’s post, but the race was won by Ram Naresh Yadav, an advocate close to senior Janata Party leader and later Prime Minister, Chaudhary Charan Singh.Ram Naresh Yadav, who was then Lok Sabha member from Azamgarh, took oath as Chief Minister on June 23, 1977. Nearly six months later, he vacated his Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat and contested from Nidhauli Kalan Assembly constituency.AdvertisementSubsequently, a bypoll was announced for the Azamgarh Lok Sabha. It was a prestigious seat. It had been vacated by the Chief Minister, thus raising its profile. Besides, the Janata Party had won the state with a huge margin only a year earlier.The Janata Party fielded Ram Bachan Yadav, a prominent leader and a confidant of Charan Singh who had served as a minister in previous state governments (Charan Singh’s Bhartiya Kranti Dal-Congress (R) alliance government in 1969 and in Tribhuvan Narain Singh’s short-lived government in 1971.)His opponent was the Congress’s Mohsina Kidwai, who had lost her Assembly poll in 1977 from Daryapur seat in Barabanki. Heading into the May 1978 bypoll, it seemed an easy fight for the Janata Party.But when the results were announced, Kidwai stunned all predictions by getting 1,31,329 votes against Ram Bachan’s 95,944 votes.The significance of the win lay in what was to follow: it would prove to be the beginning of the Congress’s revival. A few months after Azamgarh, Indira Gandhi won in the Chikmagalur Lok Sabha byelection by a margin of 77,333 votes, beating Janata Party contender Veerendra Patil.you may likeThe defeat in Azamgarh added to the woes of the ruling Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, which was already battling factionalism amid the waning influence and authority of Chief Minister Ram Naresh Yadav. Janata Party General Secretary Madhu Limaye had visited Lucknow a few days earlier and requested party MLAs to keep calm until the Azamgarh bypoll. But that was not to be.The Azamgarh results shifted the ground from under Chief Minister Yadav’s feet and on February 15, 1979, he resigned. Meanwhile, Kidwai’s win came as a boost for Indira Gandhi’s Congress. Her name began to be taken in the same breath as Indira Gandhi’s, adding to her clout, which she retained until she was active in politics.There have been many election upsets in Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, but none as defining as Kidwai’s win. The only appropriate comparisons are probably the BJP’s Lok Sabha bypoll losses in February 2018 from Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Maurya respectively. However, both Sanjay Nishad and Nagendra Patel, the candidates who defeated the BJP nominees, later jumped ship to the BJP. In contrast, Kidwai not only stayed on, but emerged as an able leader for decades to come.The writer is Senior Associate Editor, The Indian Express