Congress party leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi. File
| Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
As a court in Gujarat’s Surat rejected Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s application for a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark, party spokesperson A.M. Singhvi in a media briefing in Delhi on April 20 said a wrong decision has been reaffirmed.
“We will appeal to Supreme Court and explore all other legal possibilities,” he said.
“The point is simple, a most unfortunate and unsustainable legal decision of the magistrate has been upheld in an even more erroneous judgement of the sessions court given today. The conviction has been upheld contrary to all basic and elementary principles of law.
“The judgement will be challenged in near future in the High Court. We are confident, that superior courts with the constitutional power of judicial review, namely High Court and Supreme Court will set right the legal errors found in this judgement,” he said.
Dr. Singhvi added that Congress is clear that the “judgements are devoid of valid and sustainable legal reasoning”.
“The one-line remark of Rahul Gandhi in a two-and-a-half-page long speech has been from inception completely distorted out of recognition to serve narrow ends of motivated complainants.
“The BJP’s speed and zeal to act after the original order depicts that they are motivated by political animosity. Their misleading statements about the OBC community have backfired on them. And the whole community sees the BJP as misutilising and encashing the OBC community for narrow political gains,” he said.
He further said that the voice of Rahul Gandhi is not to be silenced in the manner BJP thinks it can do. “The BJP has been, in a sense, from Mr. Modi, to the government to the ruling party, is captured in a fear psychosis.”