Indian court rejects Rahul Gandhi bid to have defamation conviction suspended

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has failed in a high court plea to suspend his conviction for defamation, denting his hopes of returning to parliament and contesting national elections due next year.

Gandhi is expected to appeal the verdict and still has the option to take his plea to a larger bench in the same Gujarat High Court, with the country’s Supreme Court in New Delhi being his last option to seek recourse.

“We have noted the verdict of the single-judge bench of the Gujarat High Court on the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi,” said the general secretary for communications of Gandhi’s Congress party, Jairam Ramesh. “The reasoning of the Hon’ble judge is being studied, as it should be.

“The judgment only redoubles our resolve to pursue the matter further.”

Gandhi, a fierce critic of prime minister Narendra Modi and touted as his main challenger in the 2024 polls, lost his seat in the lower house of India’s parliament in March after a court found him guilty of criminal defamation over remarks he made about several people with the surname “Modi”.

He was sentenced to the maximum penalty for criminal defamation of two years, with the jail term put on hold and bail granted pending his appeal. Indian parliamentary rules say a member loses their seat if they are convicted of a crime and sentenced to two or more years in prison.

“Why all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have Modi in their names?” Gandhi had said during a rally in the southern Karnataka state in 2019 while referring to a business tycoon, a former Indian Premier League cricket chief, and the Indian prime minister respectively.

The defamation case was filed by Purnesh Modi, a state-level lawmaker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Prime Minister Modi’s home state Gujarat. He claimed Gandhi’s comments had “defamed the entire Modi community”.

The prosecution of Gandhi, the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister and scion of the main opposition Congress party, was condemned by opponents of Mr Modi’s BJP as an assault on democracy and free speech by a government seeking to crush an election rival. The speed of his removal from parliament shocked Indian politics.

Gandhi was convicted on 23 March and expelled from parliament the next day, sparking opposition lawmakers from a range of parties to rally to his defence and calling his expulsion a new low for India’s constitutional democracy.

Justice Hemant Prachchhak, reading out his verdict, said that an earlier lower court order refusing to grant a stay on Gandhi’s conviction was “just and legal”.

Noting that such stays are an exception, the court observed no injustice will be caused to Gandhi if the conviction is not put on hold, adding that the criminal appeal be decided on its own merits and as expeditiously as possible.

“There is no need to interfere with the said order. Therefore, the application is dismissed,” he said.

Earlier in May, Gujarat High Court reserved its order on Gandhi’s plea seeking a stay on his conviction. He moved the high court on 25 April after the Surat sessions court declined to stay his conviction.

Responding to the court order, Purnesh Modi issued a statement saying: “We welcome today’s verdict by the high court... He [Gandhi] should think about it and not create such histories.”

Meanwhile, critics of Mr Modi say India’s democracy – the world’s largest with nearly 1.4 billion people – has been in retreat since he first came to power in 2014. They accuse his populist government of pursuing a Hindu nationalist agenda, a charge his administration has denied. Mr Modi’s government says its policies benefit all Indians.

Gandhi‘s family, starting with his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, has produced three prime ministers. Two of them – Rahul Gandhi‘s grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and father, Rajiv Gandhi – were assassinated.

Even though Gandhi is projected to be the main challenger to the Modi government, his Indian National Congress party has suffered humiliating defeats in the last two general elections in 2014 and 2019.