- Gandhi got a two-year sentence in the case leading to his disqualification from Parliament
New Delhi, Aug 4.
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Gujarat High Court order upholding a two-year jail term awarded to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case in connection with his controversial remark that all Modis were chors.
The conviction had led to his immediate disqualification from Parliament and his eviction from his official accommodation in Lutyens Delhi.
Whether his disqualification would be set aside with equal alacrity so that he can attend Parliament for the rest of the session remains to be seen. The Congress has already made a representation to this effect to the Parliament secretariat.
The stay on conviction would also allow him to contest in any fresh elections to Waynad constituency in Kerala which he represented before his disqualification.
The two-year conviction attracted a rigorous provision of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which bars any person convicted for any offence over two years or more from contesting elections for eight years on the ground of committing an act of moral turpitude.
A bench led by Justice B.R. Gavai stayed the conviction today till the appeal in the case was decided.
The bench noted that the trial court and the High Court judgements had to reasoning at all to justify why the maximum sentence that could have been given in defamation had been awarded to Rahul Gandhi. The maximum sentence is two years or fine or both, the bench pointed out.
“If he had been given one year, 11 months and 29 days,” he would have disqualified as a member of parliament and a parliamentary constituency deprived of its representative in Parliament, the three-judge bench said.
The offence was non-cognisable, compoundable and bailable, hence the courts ought to have explained why they were awarding the maximum sentence. The bench also comprised Justices P.S. Narasimha and Sanjay Kumar.
The High Court and the trial judge have not address this at all despite writing reams in the case, the bench said. The bench said that Rahul Gandhi’s remarks, made in a political rally, were not in good taste. People in public life ought to be more cautious in their remarks, it said.
Gandhi had in an earlier instance been forced to apologise to the Supreme Court over contempt charges over yet another political speech in which he had said that even the top court agreed with his view that “chowkidar chor hai”.
His earlier speech was made in the context of the Rafale defence deal.
