A Gujarat high court judge on Wednesday recused herself from hearing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s appeal challenging the order of a Surat court which declined to stay his conviction in a 2019 defamation case last week.
The Congress leader is currently out on bail. He had filed the plea on Tuesday and it was listed for hearing at 2.30pm on Wednesday.
“When the matter came up for hearing in the second half today, justice Gita Gopi, in whose court the matter was listed, said, ‘not before me’,” Gandhi’s counsel P S Champaneri said.
Champaneri said a note will now be sent to the acting chief justice for the matter to be taken up by some other court following which the next date of hearing will be fixed.
Read: Relief for Rahul Gandhi in Modi surname case, Patna HC stays lower court's order
A metropolitan magistrate’s court in Surat on March 23 had convicted and sentenced Gandhi to two years in prison in a criminal defamation case for a remark he made about the Modi surname ahead of the 2019 general elections.
{{/usCountry}}A metropolitan magistrate’s court in Surat on March 23 had convicted and sentenced Gandhi to two years in prison in a criminal defamation case for a remark he made about the Modi surname ahead of the 2019 general elections.
{{/usCountry}}Due to his conviction, Gandhi was disqualified as Lok Sabha MP from Kerala’s Wayanad on March 24. On April 3, the former Congress president filed an appeal before the sessions court against the verdict and was subsequently granted bail till the disposal of his plea.
On April 20, the court rejected Gandhi’s plea for a stay on his conviction, prompting him to move the high court.
Under the law, the conviction and two-year jail term renders Gandhi unfit to enter either House of Parliament for a period of eight years. But this can be reversed if he can get the conviction overturned or the sentence reduced to less than two years by a higher court.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Purnesh Modi, who is the complainant in the case, called Gandhi a repeat offender and said the latter’s appeal was a “dirty display of childish arrogance”.