New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party has urged Devyani Khobragade, the woman at the centre of a diplomatic storm in the United States, to stand for Lok Sabha elections, highlighting how public outrage has turned the case into a battleground for votes ahead of next year's election.
Khobragade stands accused in New York of fraudulently obtaining a work visa for her housekeeper and paying a fraction of the minimum wage.
Furious that one of its foreign service officers had been handcuffed and subjected to a strip-search like 'a common criminal', India recently removed security barriers outside the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and withdrew some privileges accorded to American diplomats.
Politicians, including the leaders of the two main parties, refused to meet a delegation of visiting U.S. lawmakers.
"Because of the election, they will try to outdo each other," said Neerja Chowdhury, a political analyst and a former political editor of Indian Express newspaper.
"They don't want to be seen as weak on the issue when the mood in the country is one of huge anger about this."
Seizing on the fact that Khobragade was a lower-caste Hindu, BSP leader Mayawati accused the government of reacting slowly because of her caste.
"If this woman was from another caste, the central government wouldn't have delayed taking action for so long," said Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh.
"Had it not been for the election, or had she come from an upper caste, this would not have gained mass appeal. It's a very competitive time and all the parties have to show a pro-Dalit face," said Ajay Gudavarthy of the politics department at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Indignant coverage by TV news channels of the diplomat's ordeal at the hands of U.S. marshals has added to a sense that national pride has been wounded.
A senior member of the BJP has even suggested that partners of gay U.S. diplomats in the country should be put behind bars for contravening India's newly restored ban on gay sex.
Anand Grover, a leading Indian human rights lawyer, said that minorities and the poor were often dealt with harshly in detention, but "people from the upper class will be treated differently".
