Three months after Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in the criminal defamation case over the ‘Modi’ surname remark, all eyes will be on the Gujarat High Court on Friday when it will deliver its verdict on the former Congress chief’s
plea seeking a stay on his conviction.
Justice Hemant Prachchhak will deliver the verdict at 11:00 am on Friday.
If the court stays his conviction in the case, Rahul Gandhi may be reinstatement as a Member of Parliament.
In May, Justice Prachchhak had refused to grant any interim relief to Gandhi saying it will pass a final order after the summer vacation, which ended three weeks back.
During a hearing on April 29, Gandhi’s lawyer had argued that a maximum punishment of two years for a bailable and non-cognisable offence meant the leader could lose his Lok Sabha seat “permanently and irreversibly”, which was a “very serious additional irreversible consequence to the person and the constituency he represents”.
A metropolitan magistrate’s court in Surat sentenced the former Congress president to two years in jail on March 23 after convicting him under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (criminal defamation) in a 2019 case filed by Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Purnesh Modi.
Surat West MLA Purnesh Modi 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.
Following the Surat court’s verdict, Gandhi, who was representing Kerala’s Wayanad seat in the Lok Sabha, was disqualified as MP under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act.
Gandhi challenged the order in a sessions court in Surat along with an application seeking a stay on the conviction. While granting him bail, the court, on April 20, refused to stay the conviction, after which he approached the HC.
(With PTI inputs)
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