A day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was convicted in a 2019 criminal defamation case, party leaders will meet President Droupadi Murmu on Friday to raise the matter with her. The Congress has also called a meeting of opposition leaders.
AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the party will hold a meeting with other opposition leaders in the morning and would stage a protest march from Parliament House to Vijay Chowk. The Congress also announced a mass agitation, after a meeting held at Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge's residence on Thursday evening. The party is expected to conduct protest marches across Delhi and in other states on Monday.
"This is another major example of the Modi government's politics of vendetta, threat and intimidation. We will fight it legally as well as politically. We will not bow down or be intimidated by such politics and will turn this into a major political issue," Ramesh said on Thursday after the meeting to discuss the party's strategy.
The Congress has called the Surat court's conviction "erroneous and unsustainable" and plans to challenge it in a higher court. Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail by the court in the 2019 criminal defamation case over his "Modi surname" remark, in a setback to the Lok Sabha MP who faces the risk of disqualification. The case was filed against him on a complaint by BJP MLA Purnesh Modi for his alleged remark, "How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname?" The Surat court has granted Gandhi bail and suspended the sentence for 30 days to allow him to appeal in a higher court.
As per a Supreme Court judgment passed on July 10, 2013, any MP, MLA or MLC who is convicted of a crime and given a sentence of a minimum of two years stands to be disqualified from the House with immediate effect.
After the judgment was pronounced by the Surat court, Congress workers took out protests in many states. Several political leaders including Sharad Pawar and Arvind Kejriwal came out in support of Rahul, and slammed the BJP for “conspiring against non-BJP leaders”. "A conspiracy is being hatched to eliminate non-BJP leaders and parties by prosecuting them. We have differences with the Congress, but it is not right to implicate Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case like this,” Kejriwal tweeted.