The Supreme Court will hear on Friday Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s petition challenging the Gujarat High Court’s order refusing to stay his conviction in the ‘Modi surname defamation case’.A Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Tuesday agreed to take up Gandhi’s petition challenging the Gujarat High Court’s July 7 verdict after senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi mentioned it for urgent listing.
Following a Surat court’s March 23 verdict convicting him in the defamation case and giving him two-year imprisonment, Gandhi–elected to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala in 2019–was disqualified as an MP under the Representation of the People Act. A stay on his conviction would pave the way for his reinstatement as an MP.Noting that Gandhi was already facing 10 criminal cases across India, Justice Hemant Prachchhak of the Gujarat High Court had on July 7 said there was no reasonable ground to stay the conviction and the magisterial court’s order was “just, proper and legal”. However, even after dismissal of his plea for stay of conviction by the sessions court, Rahul Gandhi will not go to jail as his sentence remains suspended.The high court had noted that Gandhi, while addressing a poll rally where he made the controversial remark, took Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name in his speech to “add sensation” and with an intention to “affect the result” of the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
However, Gandhi submitted before the top court that if the impugned judgement was not stayed, it would lead to “throttling of free speech, free expression, free thought, and free statement” and it would contribute to the “systematic, repetitive emasculation of democratic institutions and the consequent strangulation of democracy which would be gravely detrimental to the political climate and future of India”.BJP MLA and former minister in Gujarat government Purnesh Modi had filed a criminal defamation case against Gandhi over his “How come all thieves have Modi as the common surname?” remark made during an election rally at Kolar in Karnataka on April 13, 2019.
A metropolitan magistrate’s court in Surat had on March 23 sentenced Rahul Gandhi to two-year jail term after convicting him under sections 499 and 500 (criminal defamation) of the IPC in the case. Gandhi challenged the order in a sessions court in Surat, which remains pending. While granting him bail, the sessions court on April 20 refused to stay the conviction, following which, he had moved the High Court where he failed to get a favourable order.The Congress leader moved the top court on July 15 against the high court’s order, arguing that his comment was a part of a political speech made during the 2019 Lok Sabha campaign and that there was no intention to defame the complainant.
