Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi doesn't have it easy. His tenure as crown prince to India's grand old party has coincided with its worst-ever electoral showing and trouble continues to brew in state units across the country. It's no wonder that the youth leader can often be very tired. Except that on Wednesday, Gandhi seemed to pick the worst possible place to betray that fatigue: Parliament.

Cameras in the Lok Sabha picked up the Congress heir apparent apparently nodding off. Worse, he seemed to be napping just as the leader of his party in the house, Mallikarjun Kharge, was berating the government for the attacks on Dalits in Gujarat, an issue that the Congress has taken up in a big way.

The images quickly made their way on to social media and TV, with visuals of the Gandhi scion with his head in his hands and his eyes shut. Bahujan Samajwadi Party chief Mayawati – who has always sought to take the lead on Dalit issues – said afterwards, "It shows his seriousness, he was sleeping, when house is debating on on such a serious issue."

The Congress response did Gandhi no favours. At first it was argued that he was only "looking down" or "thinking." Later, Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury blamed the weather: "How can anyone sleep in so much din? It's so hot outside that when we go inside we close our eyes to give them some rest."

Tehseen Poonawalla, a socialite who often defends the Congress party on prime-time debates, added an even more in-depth explanation that made it hard to figure out whether he was being serious.

The session was debating the brutal assault on Dalit youngsters for skinning a cow in Una in the Gujarat's Gir-Somnath district on July 11. Gandhi is scheduled to travel to the town on Thursday.

Unfortunately, this isn't even the first time he's nodded off in the house. Gandhi has been caught on camera, with his head bowed and eyes closed, on at least two separate occasions the past two years. Nor is this the first time that the nation has woken up to a parliamentarian caught snoozing on the job. From HD Deve Gowda to Smriti Irani, other politicians have also, in the past, have squeezed in their forty winks where possible.

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The snoozing scion naturally brought out the very best in Twitter.