Rahul Gandhi in a September 2013 press conference criticising the Congress’s ordinance
New Delhi:
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha after his conviction in a criminal defamation case comes under a Supreme Court order that the Congress itself tried to overturn using an ordinance in 2013.
The Supreme Court in April 2013 held that MPs and MLAs convicted with a minimum two-year sentence will be immediately disqualified from the house without getting three months to appeal, as was the case until then.
Five months later that year, the ruling Congress government in the centre hurriedly pushed an ordinance that sought to overturn the rule that disqualifies convicted MPs and MLAs.
At that time, Mr Gandhi openly came out against his party’s decision and called the move a “complete nonsense“.
“I personally think what the government is doing on the ordinance is wrong. It was a political decision, every party does it, and there is a time to stop this nonsense… If we actually want to stop corruption then we cannot make these compromises,” Mr Gandhi, who was 43 then, had said, underscoring a seeming divide within his party. He said the ordinance should be “torn and thrown out”, and then in a stunning move at the press conference, he tore a piece of paper symbolically.
The Congress eventually scrapped the ordinance. The BJP came to power in the centre a year later and the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi became Prime Minister.
Fast forward to today, the Lok Sabha disqualified Mr Gandhi after his conviction in a criminal defamation case filed by a BJP leader for asking whether people with the surname “Modi” are “thieves”.
He is no longer an MP under a rule that his party once wanted to do away with and for which he stood up against his own party.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders have said the remark by Mr Gandhi was a smear against all those sharing the Modi surname, which is associated with Other Backward Classes, or OBCs. They said Mr Gandhi’s conviction has got nothing to do with them and the case followed the due process of law.
“Rahul Gandhi made very derogatory remark and disgraced an entire OBC (Other Backward Classes) Community. Shockingly, some Congress leaders are trying to defend it,” BJP leader and Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said.
Several opposition leaders have condemned the BJP government over what they called the use of a frivolous and bizarre case to target Mr Gandhi a year before the national election.
