Mobilenews24x7 Bureau
Rahul Gandhi has suffered yet another legal stumping on Friday when the Gujarat High Court denied him a stay on his conviction in the earlier said criminal defamation for his utterances (verbal only) in Kolar during a campaign in 2019.
It was all about the pulling the surname of ‘Modi’(any in general) incidentally may be arel associated with thieves. Whereas the legalities do not, as per legal experts, verbal utterances do not fall within the ambit of criminal defamation to invite a conviction of two years.
The operative part of the verdict on Friday, he affirmed that the previous decision of the Sessions court, which declined to halt the conviction, was deemed “fair and lawful.”
Which was preceded by a judgement of the Sessions Court in Surat on 20 April had rejected Gandhi’s plea seeking a stay on his conviction.
It all began when in March 23 last Surat Magistrate court had convicted Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case and sentenced him to two years in jail for his comment that allegedly said “all people with Modi surname are thieves” that he made during an election rally in Kolar in April 2019.
As a member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi who has influence politically did not exercise the required control on him self was what Justice Haridash Varma said then.
The judge asserted, “The accused had taken the reference of the surname of the current Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, to satisfy his political greed and insulted and defamed 13 crore people living in the whole of India having the surname ‘Modi.”
So that followed the disqualification of his Lok Sabha membership and the conviction of two years jail.
Acknowledging that granting stays in such cases is uncommon, the High Court, emphasised that Gandhi would not face any injustice if the conviction were not stayed.
Nonetheless, the court emphasised the need for the criminal appeal to be determined based on its own merits and with the utmost urgency.
The Congress Party legal luminary and senior Congress leader Abhisekh Manu Sanghvi has said that they will move the Supreme Court against the High Court order dismissing Gandhi’s plea.
In fact, during the last Lok Sabha election campaigns similar such boundaries in the use of personal insinuations were crossed by all the parties including the BJP which just passed over the heads of the legal think-tanks and did not amount to be a criminal case for defamation.
Was it only to somehow disqualify his Lok Sabha membership that such an inference was drawn, doubts P Chidambaram of the Congress and a senior advocate himself.
However, Rahul has taken resort in a different kind of pre-election canvassing by jumping into the common men’s milieu like drivers, farmers, and any other working class community to maintain his chemistry with the voters.
