Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s appeal for a stay of conviction in a defamation case was denied by a judge in the western Indian state of Gujarat, creating doubts about his ability to run in elections scheduled for the following year. Congress party leader Gandhi was found guilty of making derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others with the surname Modi last month in a case brought by a state lawmaker from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail by a district court in Surat city in 2019 for comments he made against two fugitive Indian businessmen with the surname Modi.
The 52-year-old leader had questioned at a gathering that year, “How come all thieves have the name Modi?” As Congress politician and attorney Naishadh Desai informed reporters on Thursday, Gandhi’s conviction has not been stayed by the Surat court. We’ll be filing an appeal with the Gujarat High Court on Friday. The judiciary has our unwavering confidence that it will do the right thing and defend our democracy,” he stated. Although Thursday’s judgment was a setback for Gandhi, his jail time will not begin until all of his appeals of the conviction have been exhausted. After being convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for the Modi insults in March, Gandhi lost his parliamentary seat. Politicians in India must be disqualified if they have been “convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years” under the legislation governing elections. If the court does not reverse Gandhi’s conviction and two-year term, he would lose his right to vote in elections for eight years. Jairam Ramesh, a senior Congress politician and Supreme Court lawyer, said the party would exhaust all legal avenues to have Gandhi’s conviction overturned. Purnesh Modi, a BJP lawmaker from Gujarat (Modi’s home state), filed the defamation suit against Gandhi.
The Gandhi family has been the focus of the BJP’s frequent accusations of corruption as part of the party’s strategy to undermine the Congress and gain political power in India in the decades after independence in 1947. Gandhi’s trial has been widely decried as the latest attack on democracy and free speech by a government aiming to stifle dissent because he is the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister and a descendant of a dynasty that has produced two previous prime ministers. Indian political parties and academics were taken aback by how quickly he was removed from parliament.
