Gandhi moved Supreme Court after the Gujarat High Court dismissed his plea on 7 July, upholding the lower court’s order convicting him.
Published Jul 21, 2023 | 2:50 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 21, 2023 | 2:51 PM
Rahul Gandhi defamation case in Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court on Friday, 21 July, sought responses from former Gujarat minister Purnesh Modi and the state government on the appeal by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who was disqualified as the MP representing the Wayanad constituency in Kerala, challenging the Gujarat High Court verdict which dismissed his plea seeking a stay on his conviction in a defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark.
A bench of Justices BR Gavai and PK Mishra issued notices over Gandhi’s “How come all thieves have Modi as the common surname?” remark made during an election rally at Kolar in Karnataka in 2019.
“The limited question at this stage is whether the conviction deserves to be stayed,” the bench observed.
Seeking an earlier date for the hearing, senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Gandhi, said the Congress leader had suffered for 111 days, lost one Parliament session, and was about to lose another session.
Singhvi said the only urgency was that a by-election for the Wayanad constituency — from where Gandhi was elected and was later disqualified from Lok Sabha upon his conviction and two-year sentence in the defamation case — could be announced at any moment.
At the outset, Justice Gavai made it clear that his late father RS Gavai, though not a Congress member, was closely associated with the party for more than four decades and was a Member of Parliament and MLA with its support. He said his brother is also a politician.
“If anyone has any problem with my background then please let me know”, Justice Gavai told Singhvi and senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Purnesh Modi.
Both Singhvi and Jethmalani said that although they knew these facts, they don’t have any objection to Justice Gavai hearing this matter.
The apex court has posted the matter for further hearing on 4 August.
Gandhi moved Supreme Court after the Gujarat High Court dismissed his plea on 7 July, upholding the lower court’s order.
In his appeal filed on 15 July Gandhi said that if the 7 July judgment was not stayed, it would lead to the throttling of free speech, expression, thought, and statement.
While dismissing the plea, Justice Hemant Prachchhak noted that Gandhi was already facing 10 criminal cases across India, adding that the order of the lower court was “just, proper and legal” in handing out a two-year jail term to Gandhi for his remarks.
A stay of the conviction would have paved the way for Gandhi’s reinstatement as a Member of Parliament.
“He (Gandhi) was trying to stay the conviction on absolutely non-existent grounds. It is a well-settled principle of law that staying of conviction is not a rule, but an exception, resorted only in rare cases. Disqualification is not only limited to MPs and MLAs. Moreover, as many as 10 criminal cases are pending against the applicant,” the high court said.
“After this complaint, another complaint was filed in a court in Pune by the grandson of Veer Savarkar for Gandhi’s defamatory utterance against Veer Savarkar at Cambridge. Another complaint against him was filed in the concerned court of Lucknow,” it said.
Against this backdrop, the judge said that refusing to stay on conviction would not in any way result in injustice to the applicant.
“Impugned order passed by the appellate court is just, proper and legal, and does not call for any interference. However, it is hereby requested by the concerned learned district judge to decide the criminal appeal on its own merits and in accordance with the law as expeditiously as possible.
“In view of the above, the present criminal revision application deserved to be dismissed and accordingly it is dismissed,” the judge while reading the order.
While noting that there was no reasonable ground to stay the conviction at this stage, Justice Prachchhak also directed the district and sessions court of Surat to hear Gandhi’s appeal against the conviction “as expeditiously as possible”.
The case was filed against Rahul Gandhi on a complaint by Purnesh Modi for the 52-year-old Congress leader’s remark.
The disqualified MP made the comment on the “Modi surname” while addressing a rally at Kolar in Karnataka on 13 April, 2019, during the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress leader, elected to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala in 2019, was convicted on 23 March by the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate HH Varma and sentenced to two years in jail.
The magistrate’s court granted him bail the same day and suspended the sentence for 30 days to allow him to appeal in a higher court.
A day after his conviction and sentence, he was disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha. Several Opposition parties decried the haste at which he was disqualified, not allowing him time to appeal.
He moved the high court after a court in Gujarat’s Surat city rejected the application for a stay on his conviction on 20 April.
(With PTI inputs)
