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Metropolis Desk-
A sessions court in Surat has dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s appeal for a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case last month. This means the MP from Wayanad remains disqualified from Parliament. He can now go to the Gujarat High Court to appeal against the decision of the sessions court.
On April 13, 2019, while campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul had rhetorically said in Hindi at an election rally in Kolar, Karnataka: “Why do all thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, or Narendra Modi, have the surname ‘Modi’?” The next day, a local BJP leader and former Gujarat minister, Purnesh Modi, filed a private complaint before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Surat, accusing Rahul of having defamed everyone with the name Modi, reports The Indian Express.
On March 23 this year, Surat magistrate H H Verma found Rahul guilty of criminal defamation under IPC Section 500, and gave him the maximum sentence allowed, which is two years in jail. The decision triggered Section 8(3) of The Representation of the People Act, 1951, which states: “A person convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years shall be disqualified from the date of such conviction and shall continue to be disqualified for a further period of six years since his release.”
On March 24, the Lok Sabha Secretariat issued a notification saying that he stood disqualified from the House with effect from March 23, the date of his conviction.
On April 3, Rahul moved the Surat sessions court in appeal. He filed two applications, one for the suspension of sentence, and the other for the suspension of conviction. Had the second application been allowed, his membership of Lok Sabha would have been restored. Rahul submitted to the sessions court that it seemed “reasonable to argue” that the maximum sentence awarded to him was to “attract the order of disqualification (as an MP)”.
On April 13, Additional Sessions Judge R P Mogera said he would pronounce his order on April 20.
The Congress party’s head of communications Jairam Ramesh has said that they would explore “all options” that are available. This essentially means Rahul has to move a higher court against the sessions court’s order, which in this case is the Gujarat High Court.
His disqualification can still be reversed if the High Court grants a stay on the conviction by the magistrate’s court or decides the appeal against the sessions court’s order in his favour. In a 2018 decision in ‘Lok Prahari v Union of India’, the Supreme Court had clarified that the disqualification “will not operate from the date of the stay of conviction by the appellate court”.
Significantly, the stay cannot merely be a suspension of sentence under Section 389 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), but a stay of conviction. Under Section 389 of the CrPC, an Appellate Court can suspend the sentence of a convict while the appeal is pending. This is akin to releasing the appellant on bail.
