File photo of Rahul Gandhi in Amethi
Last week, Amethi district lost its VIP status. Today, the Allahabad High Court ruled that there is no Amethi district any more. Amethi is also the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress number 2 Rahul Gandhi.
The court's verdict will directly impact Mr Gandhi's efforts to implement centrally-funded schemes in his area; the Congress vice-president was on several Amethi district committees which will now cease to exist too. Mr Gandhi's party leads the ruling UPA alliance at the Centre and the Congress's second-most important national leader has made it clear that his political efforts for next year's general elections will be centred around a big victory in UP.
In 2010, the then Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh had sliced parts of Rae Bareli and Sultanpur districts to carve out the state's 72nd district. She called it the Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj district.
The Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, who displaced Mayawati's BSP government last year, not only renamed the new district Amethi, but also granted it VIP status, which meant that it would get 24-hour power supply in a state with an acute shortage of electricity. Those were days when his party's relations with Mr Gandhi's Congress were extremely cordial.
In recent months, however, that relationship has veered to hostile with Mr Yadav's father Mulayam Singh hitting out at the Congress repeatedly, though he continues to provide crucial external support to the minority UPA government.
Last week, Akhilesh Yadav withdrew VIP status not from Amethi and from Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency of Sonia Gandhi, Congress chief and Rahul Gandhi's mother.
In scrapping Amethi district today, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court accepted a public interest petition that the new district was illegal because a census survey was on when it was created. The law prohibits the creation of new districts when a census survey is on.