First Person To Receive Maximum Sentence For Defamation: Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said that he was the first person to receive a “maximum sentence for defamation” and he had never imagined that he would be disqualified from the Lok Sabha when he had joined politics two decades ago.

Rahul Gandhi, who is on a 10-day tour to the US referred to his disqualification from Lok Sabha as a Member of Parliament (MP) while speaking at Stanford University in California on Wednesday.

He said, “I don't think when I joined politics in 2004, I ever imagined what I see going on in our country. It was way outside what I had ever imagined.”

Rahul Gandhi further said, “I was the first person to be given a criminal sentence for defamation and the maximum sentence to be disqualified from the parliament. I didn't imagine something like this was possible. But I think it has given me a huge opportunity, probably much bigger than the opportunity I would have gotten sitting in the parliament, that's just the way politics works.”

His comments come a day after he had lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing the Indian diaspora in San Fransico.

In March this year, Rahul Gandhi had been disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha after a Surat court had sentenced him to two years of imprisonment in a defamation case filed against him over his ‘Modi surname’ remark.

The decision was based on his remarks made in April 2019 when during an election rally at Karnataka’s Kolar, he had said “how come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname”. The court approved his bail on a surety and stayed the sentence for 30 days to allow him to approach the higher courts.

Rahul Gandhi in his Stanford address said that the opposition in India is struggling and the drama started months ago. “

"The drama started six months ago. We were struggling....The opposition is struggling in India. A huge financial dominance, institutional capture, struggling to fight the Democratic fight in our country. None of the systems were working," he said.

Rahul Gandhi further added, “Democracy isn't just about an opposition party. It's about several institutions that support the opposition. Those institutions were either captured or were not playing the role they were supposed to play.”

Addressing the NRI’s in California on Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi took a jibe at PM Modi saying that some groups in India have the “disease” of being under the impression that they know everything.

He said, “In India, we grew up with people of different languages, different religions. And that is what is being attacked. The tradition in India, of people like Gandhi Ji and Guru Nanak Ji, has been that you should not be under the impression of knowing everything. It is a 'disease' that some groups of India think that they know everything. Even if they have a conversation with God, they might explain to him.”

The Congress leader further added saying,” And of course, Prime Minister is one of them. If you make him sit with God, he would start explaining to him (God) how the universe works...and God would get confused about what I had created.”

On the other hand, his remarks triggered a backlash from BJP who criticized Rahul Gandhi for using foreign soul to tarnish the image of India.

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