Modi surname case: Cong’s Singhvi takes ‘supersonic’ dig at ‘unasked advice’

Congress leader and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi who is representing Gandhi in the court on Saturday said “very serious ex-facie vitiating factors” about the trial’s process led to the conviction of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark. 

Taking a jibe at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s stance on Congress’ readiness in challenging the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as the MP, Singhvi said, “I am amused to see on television a lot of unasked advice; if I were there, I would file an appeal in 8 hours, someone said I would file an appeal in 24 hours. There must be supersonic lawyers. But the point is, are we here to do supersonic filing?”

BJP has accused the grand old party of being responsible for the dismissal of the Wayanad Member of Parliament (MP) as it ‘did not file an appeal against his conviction, despite having several distinguished lawyers in the party’.

At Saturday’s hearing in the Gujarat High Court, Singhvi questioned the “validity” and “fairness” of the Lok Sabha secretariat’s decision to dismiss Gandhi after “only 24 hours”.

“Because you have the power to do something does not mean there are no fetters inbuilt without saying in the power in the manner you exercise it,” Singhvi said on Saturday in defence of Rahul Gandhi against the Surat court order of two years in prison, which later resulted his disqualification from Parliament and has made him ineligible to run for office for six years.

All through BJP has maintained that Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from Lok Sabha is ‘natural outcome of law’.

A metropolitan magistrate’s court in Surat on March 23 sentenced the former Congress president to two years in jail after convicting him under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (criminal defamation) in a 2019 case filed by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Gujarat MLA Purnesh Modi. 

Following the verdict, Gandhi, elected to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala in 2019, was disqualified as an MP under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act.

Gandhi, 52, challenged the order in the Surat sessions court along with an application seeking a stay to the conviction. While granting him bail, the court on April 20 refused to stay the conviction. 

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.