Indore: Senior Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Kamal Nath on Tuesday said party leader Rahul Gandhi had been misinterpreted and questioned his disqualification as MP after being convicted in the Modi surname defamation case. They were addressing a seminar on 'Protection and Upliftment of the Constitution' held by Madhya Pradesh's All-India Professional Congress in Indore. Gandhi on Monday was granted bail in the defamation case but failed to get a stay on his conviction leading him to remain disqualified as an MP.
Congress leader Kamal Nath asked whether the action against Gandhi was taken with a good or a bad intention. "A defamation case was filed against Gandhi in a court in Gujarat for a statement he had made in Karnataka and that too four years ago. Is this "bona fide or mala fide"?" Nath said at the seminar.
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Asserting that Gandhi had been misinterpreted, Tharoor said that the Congress leader had never told that all Modis are thieves. "He had named three or four people with the surname Modi saying they were thieves but had never made any generalised statement. All angles of the interpretation of Gandhi's statement should have been considered. If any punishment had to be given then he could have been given a warning so that such an act is never repeated. But, instead Gandhi was ordered a jail sentence of two years which is the maximum punishment for the offence and was disqualified as an MP", Tharoor said. He also said that during election rallies, such things are very common. "You all know what the BJP has said about me and Kamal Nath during elections," he added.
