The Congress will file an appeal against the session court’s judgment rejecting former Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s application for a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark, party spokesperson and senior Supreme Court lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
He called the judgment by additional sessions judge R.P. Mogera “unfortunate” and “unsustainable” and said Mr. Gandhi would continue to speak fearlessly in the court of people. The conviction had been upheld contrary to all basic and elementary principles of law, he added.
“The judgment will be challenged in accordance with law in the near future in a high court. We are confident that superior courts with constitutional power of judicial review, namely High Court and Supreme Court, have the power and will set right the legal errors,” Mr. Singhvi said at a press conference. He asserted that Mr. Gandhi’s “one-line remark” in his 2019 speech delivered in Kolar, Karnataka, had been “distorted” beyond recognition to “serve the narrow ends of motivated complainants”.
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‘Political animosity’
“The BJP’s speed and zeal to act after the original order depicts that they are motivated by political animosity. Their misleading statements on the OBC community backfired on them. And the whole community and India see the BJP as misusing and encashing on the OBC community for narrow and cheap political gains,” Mr. Singhvi added. As a counter, the Congress dared the government to conduct a caste census and also release the data collected during the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census.
“The voice of Rahul Gandhi is not to be silenced in the manner the BJP thinks it can do. He speaks to the court of the people first and foremost. Which he will continue to do. The BJP has been, in a sense, from Mr. [Narendra] Modi downwards to the government to the ruling party, is captured in a fear psychosis,” Mr. Singhvi underlined.
Criticising the judgment, Mr. Singhvi said the first seven-eight pages were only quotations from judgments and were selectively underlined in respect to offences which had nothing to do with the offence in this case or directly support the present case. At three places in the judgment, Mr. Singhvi said there were direct reference to Prime Minister Modi with the judge calling it an outrageous case because a sitting Prime Minister had been defamed. Mr. Singhvi pointed out that the defamation law dictated that the aggrieved party must be an applicant. “Sorry sir, Prime Minister never complained and never filed the petition,” he added.
Published - April 20, 2023 03:33 pm IST
