Opposition parties on Friday rallied behind Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over the Gujarat High Court's dismissal of his plea to stay his conviction in a defamation case.
Several parties who are also part of the new alliance in making, like AAP, accused the government of “finding new techniques to throttle” Opposition leaders' voices. Congress workers in several States including Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, southern States held protests against the Gujarat High Court verdict.
Alleging that the BJP used “lies as part of a political conspiracy” to get Rahul Gandhi suspended from Parliament, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said no party leader or worker is afraid of the saffron party's “political conspiracy” and will fight the battle both legally and politically.
“Rahul Gandhi has always fought for the truth and will continue to fight in the future. The truth is that fugitives like Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul 'Bhai', Vijay Mallya, and Jatin Mehta, under the supervision of the Modi government fled the country and reached abroad suspiciously after taking public money. The BJP freed them but used lies as part of a political conspiracy, (to) put Mr. Rahul Gandhi in the dock and got him suspended from Parliament,” Kharge alleged.
AAP, which has been at loggerheads with the Congress of late, came out in support of Rahul Gandhi and accused the BJP of indulging in “unproductive politics” to divert people's attention from real issues.
AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar said that it was certainly wrong and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had also called it “wrong” when the former Lok Sabha MP was convicted in the case.
While RJD MP Manoj Jha said these judgements don't give a positive sense of the judicial architecture, Shiv Sena Uddhav leader and a Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi remarked that this kind of order on Rahul Gandhi was expected.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters, Congress spokesperson and Rahul Gandhi's counsel in the case Abhishek Singhvi said the Gujarat High Court dismissing Rahul Gandhi's plea was “highly disappointing, but not unexpected”. “The jurisprudence we have received from Gujarat, both from High Court and Sessions Court, is unique because it has no other parallel or precedent in the jurisprudence of the defamation law. HC has called it a heinous crime as if it is a crime against the country,” he said.
AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said Rahul Gandhi is fighting the battle for truth and people's interests, and an “arrogant regime” is using all the tricks to deter him. In a long Twitter post in Hindi soon after the Gujarat High Court order, Priyanka Gandhiquoted the poem “samar shesh hai...(battle is yet to be over)” by Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' and launched a scathing attack on the Modi government.
“Rahul Gandhi is fighting the battle for truth and people's interests against this 'arrogant regime',” she said. The Congress leader alleged that the “arrogant regime” wants questions related to people's interests that help improve their lives should not be raised. The arrogant regime is trying every trick in the book to suppress the truth, it is adopting all means — 'saam, daam, dand, bhed, chal, kapat (money, power, punishment, discrimination, deceit)' — to distract from questions related to the interests of the public,” she said.