New Delhi: The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud has recommended the transfer of Gujarat High Court Judge, Justice HM Prachchhak, to Patna High Court for “better administration of justice”.
Justice Prachchhak had declined to stay the two-year conviction of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case filed by Gujarat BJP MLA Purnesh Modi over the ‘Modi surname’ remark at a political rally in 2019. A bench headed by Justice BR Gavai, who is a member of the apex court Collegium, had stayed Gandhi's conviction.
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The top court, while staying Rahul Gandhi’s conviction in the defamation case, had said, "When an offence is non-cognizable, bailable and compoundable, the least that the Trial Judge was expected to do was to give some reasons as to why, in the facts and circumstances, he found it necessary to impose the maximum sentence of two years. Though the learned Appellate Court and the learned High Court have spent voluminous pages while rejecting the application for stay of conviction, these aspects have not even been touched in their orders”.
The apex court had said that no doubt that the alleged utterances by Rahul Gandhi are not in good taste and a person in public life is expected to exercise a degree of restraint while making public speeches.
“However, as has been observed by this Court while accepting the affidavit of the appellant herein in aforementioned contempt proceedings, the appellant herein ought to have been more careful while making the public speech”, the top court observed. Following the stay on his conviction, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was reinstated as a Member of the Lok Sabha by Speaker Om Birla.
