New Delhi: Congress on Friday said the Opposition party has every right to criticise the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its leader Rahul Gandhi, who is not afraid of intimidation, will continue to expose the saffron party's lies.
“Rahul Gandhi is not afraid of intimidation. He will continue to expose the BJP’s lies as he has been doing in the past whether during the time of demonetisation, Chinese incursions or wobbling economy. He is a political person and has the basic right to criticise PM Modi. In politics, it is normal to criticise. The PM himself has also said many things about other leaders,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
The Congress veteran’s comments came hours after the Gujarat High Court rejected the former MP’s appeal to stay his conviction in a 2019 defamation case involving PM Modi’s surname.
Rahul’s conviction and two-year jail term by a Surat court on March 23 led to his disqualification from the Lok Sabha on March 24. Soon after the former Congress chief was asked to vacate his official residence, prompting the party to question the alacrity with which the events had unfolded. The BJP was deliberately targeting Rahul, the Congress had alleged, as he had asked PM Modi’s links with businessman Gautam Adani in the Lok Sabha.
On Friday, Congress further alleged that the defamation case was “politically motivated” and pointed out that the lawsuit involved all the citizens and is related to freedom of speech in the country. “The government wants to control the arena of freedom of speech. Therefore, it has misused the defamation law to achieve that objective,” said Singhvi, who represented Rahul Gandhi in the Gujarat high court.
The high court order, said the Supreme Court lawyer, was “disappointing but not unexpected.” “The high court order is disappointing but not unexpected. We filed an appeal in the high court against the session's court order on April 25 and waited for an order for 67 days. The jurisprudence in the order has no parallel in the country. There are several legal shortcomings in the order and we hope to get justice from the Supreme Court where we will file a plea soon,” said Singhvi.
According to the party spokesperson, the high court order mentions several other cases against Rahul Gandhi but it is not correct to do so. “Mentioning the other cases involving Rahul Gandhi in the Surat defamation case order is wrong. There has been no conviction in all those cases. Besides, the complainants in all those cases are BJP functionaries. To me, all this seems orchestrated,” said Singhvi.
“The paragraph 63 of the order mentions a case involving the name of Vir Savarkar. It is strange that the Savarkar case was filed in April, one month after the Surat trial court convicted Rahul in the defamation case on March 23. How can this be done” he said. The top court lawyer further said that Paras 43 and 45 of the high court order mention that Rahul’s offence in the defamation case was “heinous” and involved “moral turpitude”, which was questionable as per the legal norms.
“The core issue is how someone from an amorphous group of 13 crore people just rise one day and file a complaint that Rahul has defamed the entire community,” Singhvi said over the plea that the former Congress chief’s 2019 comment “How come all the thieves have Modi surname” had insulted the entire backward community. “Interestingly, the PM is not a complainant in the case. There is no malice on the part of Rahul as alleged. Actually, the malice is from the other side which has filed all those cases just to target Rahul,” he said.
