Gujarat High Court refuses to stay Rahul Gandhi’s conviction

New Delhi: Gujarat High Court Friday dismissed Rahul Gandhi's review plea to suspend conviction in criminal defamation case over his Modi surname remark and refused to stay conviction.

The HC verdict means that Gandhi's disqualification as a Member of Parliament (MP) will continue until he gets any relief from the Supreme Court.

Pronouncing its verdict, the Gujarat High Court said, "He is seeking a stay on conviction on absolutely non-existent grounds. Stay on conviction is not a rule. As many as 10 cases are pending against him."

“It is needed to have purity in politics. A complaint has been filed against (Gandhi) by the grandson of Veer Savarkar in Pune Court after Gandhi used terms against Veer Savarkar at Cambridge. Refusal to stay conviction would not in any way result in injustice to the applicant. There are no reasonable grounds to stay conviction. The conviction is just, proper and legal," the bench of Justice Hemant Prachchhak said in his order.

In May, Justice Prachchhak, while hearing Gandhi's plea, had refused to grant any interim relief saying it will pass a final order after the summer vacation, which ended three weeks back.

During a hearing on April 29, Gandhi's lawyer had argued that a maximum punishment of two years for a bailable, non-cognisable offence meant his client could lose his Lok Sabha seat "permanently and irreversibly", which was a "very serious additional irreversible consequence to the person and the constituency he represents".

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

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

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

Surat West MLA 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.