India's Congress leader Rahul Gandhi disqualified from parliament

[March 24, 2023]  By Rupam Jain and Shivam Patel

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's opposition Congress party suffered a major blow on Friday when parliament disqualified its leader Rahul Gandhi, a day after a court convicted him for comments that many Indians deemed insulting to the prime minister.

Gandhi "stands disqualified from the membership of Lok Sabha from the date of his conviction", parliament said in a notice, referring to the lower house of parliament.

Gandhi, 52, was convicted by a court and sentenced to prison for two years in the western state of Gujarat on Thursday after he was found guilty of defamation in connection with a 2019 speech in which he referred to thieves as having the surname Modi.

He made the comment while campaigning ahead of the last general election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept back to power.

The court case was filed by a member of Modi's ruling party called Purnesh Modi, who focused on a comment Gandhi made in the 2019 speech when he was referring to two fugitive businessmen, both surnamed Modi.

"How come all thieves have the common surname Modi?" Gandhi asked.

The court granted Gandhi bail and suspended the sentence for a month. But under the constitution, a lawmaker convicted by a court stands disqualified from the parliament.

Gandhi, the scion of a dynasty that has given India three prime ministers marched across India this year to revive the political fortunes of the Congress.

Some of Gandhi's allies said the court ruling was politically motivated.

A close aide to Gandhi said the leader would abide by the order and did not enter parliament on Friday during house proceedings.

Gandhi was at the official residence of his mother, Sonia Gandhi, who is the longest serving president of the Congress party at the time the parliament notice became public, said two Congress lawmakers.

Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of India's main opposition Congress party, arrives to appear before a court in Surat in the western state of Gujarat, India, March 23, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer

"He will have to vacate his official residence but every MP gets sometime to relocate," said one Congress lawmaker adding the legal experts in the party were gearing up to file an appeal in a higher court.

'DIRECT THREAT'

Congress spokesperson of the party Pawan Khera said the party would battle on "both legally and politically".

"Rahul Gandhi will not stop from asking difficult questions and exposing crony capitalism and this government’s active role in promoting and protecting it," he said.

Earlier in the day, Congress party members held protests in different parts of the country against Gandhi's conviction.

The once-dominant Congress controls less than 10% of the elected seats in parliament's lower house and has been decimated by the BJP in two successive general elections, most recently in 2019 under Gandhi's leadership.

A Congress party lawmaker from West Bengal state, Pradip Bhattacharya, said the BJP saw Gandhi as a threat.

"The BJP is fearful about the rise of Rahul Gandhi and he poses a direct threat to the Modi government," he said.

BJP president J.P. Nadda dismissed that accusation, saying Gandhi had insulted Indians who happen to share the same surname as the prime minister.

"It is one thing to question government regarding the policies, that would be considered a healthy debate, but clearly the Congress has never followed such rules," he told Reuters.

India next general election is due by mid-2024.

(Reporting by Rupam Jain, Shivam Patel, Nigam Prusty,Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi, Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar, Subrata Nag Choudhury in West Bengal, Sumit Khanna in Gujarat; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Robert Birsel)

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