Indian opposition leader expelled from parliament after defamation conviction

The Indian opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, has been expelled from parliament 24 hours after he was convicted of defamation for a remark implying the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was a criminal.

Senior members of Gandhi’s Congress party met yesterday morning to discuss the conviction and his twoyear jail sentence when they received news of his expulsion.

Gandhi will not go to prison immediately because the court granted him bail for 30 days to file an appeal against the verdict. If an appeals court sets aside Gandhi’s conviction, he can regain his seat.

The party knew that under Indian law anyone who receives a two-year sentence is automatically disqualified to serve as a legislator. But it assumed that Gandhi, 52, would have time to appeal to a higher court first.

Instead, the office of the speaker of the house informed Gandhi that he was disqualified from the date of his conviction.

“I’m stunned by this action and by its rapidity, within 24 hours of the court verdict and while an appeal was known to be in process,” Shashi Tharoor, a senior Congress figure, tweeted. “This is politics with the gloves off and it bodes ill for our democracy.”

The case stemmed from a remark made during the 2019 election campaign in which Gandhi, the

leading face of the Congress party, had asked why “all thieves have Modi as [their] common surname”.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government has been widely accused of using the law to target critics.

Gaurav Gogoi, another prominent Congress figure, told NDTV: “With this action, the BJP has ended up proving Rahul’s point that democracy is sinking under Narendra Modi and this is the final nail in the coffin.”

BJP leaders have denied that the process against Gandhi is politicised. “What’s the problem? The law has taken its course. There is nothing political about it,” Alok Vats, a prominent BJP politician, told local media.

The disqualification means that a byelection will have to be held in Gandhi’s constituency of Wayanad in Kerala, south India. His political future remains unclear. Much hangs on the appeal process, which is expected to go all the way to the supreme court.

Knowing that the appeal process will take time, Congress has mobilised its members to come out on to the streets in protest.

Asim Ali, a political researcher, said he was puzzled by the BJP’s focus on Gandhi. “I can’t work out what the strategy is because this may benefit Rahul,” Ali said. “They [Congress] will say it shows the BJP is insecure about Rahul and that it merely validates what he has been saying.”

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a Delhibased writer and analyst, told Agence France-Presse that the verdict showed the BJP “does not want Rahul Gandhi in parliament”.

He said the disqualification followed a “big storm” of disruptions to parliamentary proceedings by Congress politicians demanding an inquiry into Modi’s relationship with the tycoon Gautam Adani.

Gandhi’s disqualification has served, at least temporarily, to unite a usually fractious opposition. “This is the lowest of the low in the history of parliamentary democracy,” said Derek O’Brien, of the Trinamool Congress party.