Samanwaya Rautray
There are too many loopholes in Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in a criminal defamation case and his lightning quick disqualification from the Lok Sabha.
Under Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act, he won’t be able to contest elections for eight years unless he gets a stay on his conviction from an appellate court. This includes his conviction and another additional six years.
Ironically enough, Rahul Gandhi had torn up a law that barred disqualification of convicted law-makers for three months. This when the top court had said that the disqualification would be immediate.
To be fair to Gandhi, there was a catch in that ordinance – if the convicted MP filed an appeal within three months, he would not be disqualified till the court decided his appeal! Given the delays plaguing the system that would have effectively meant nothing.
Gandhi saw through the ordinance as an attempt to defend the indefensible. He took the moral high ground only to see the law being invoked to disqualify him.
Aware possibly of these consequences, the Surat court had yesterday suspended his sentence and conviction and ordered that he be on bail to allow him to appeal to a higher court. Gandhi will now have to move the sessions court, and later the High Court.
Should he fail in the High Court, he always has the option of approaching the top court which has of late become slightly more intolerant of such political shenanigans than before.
All thieves carry a particular surname is at best political name-calling and falls far short of criminal defamation. Explanation 2 of Section 499 which encapsulates criminal defamation clearly says that an imputation regarding a collection of persons can amount to defamation.
That is when a particular individual who is part of that collection can prove that the statement was intended to defame him. Purnesh Modi of the BJP is certainly not the person that Gandhi would have been targeting in his speech.
The Surat judge in his ruling says that Rahul Gandhi was a Member of Parliament and ought to have exercised greater restraint. Gandhi made a reference to the “surname of the Prime Minister” to satisfy his “political greed” and in the process defamed “13 crore Modis” in India, the court said.
Rahul Gandhi’s speech was intended to convey a political message to his voters. Political name calling is a reality in today’s democracies whether at home or abroad. In a polarised world, political figures use name calling as a tool to appeal to their voters.
This phenomenon has become a permanent feature of Indian politics since 2014. The Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Atal Bihar Vajpayee era of respecting your political opponent is over.
Unfortunately, the ruling party, the BJP, which has set the tone for much of it in its political campaigns, hasn’t had to pay for it either by way of losing its political gloss or falling foul of the law.
Some studies in the United States have shown that such political pejoratives serve only limited ends i.e., make the voter mad and angry. But it also causes them to shun the democratic process[1] as the law of diminishing returns sets in[2]. Our politicians should take note.
[1] https://theconversation.com/name-calling-in-politics-grabs-headlines-but-voters-dont-like-it-and-it-could-backfire-in-the-2022-midterm-elections-190398
[2] https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2022/09/26/name-calling-in-politics-grabs-headlines-but-voters-dont-like-it/
