New Delhi: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi stares at the prospect of being disqualified from the Lok Sabha after a Surat court convicted him in a criminal defamation case and sentenced him to two years in jail.
However, the Gandhi scion — who has been given bail, and his sentence suspended for 30 days to allow an appeal — would not be in this predicament if an ordinance introduced by the Congress-led UPA government had not been publicly junked by him in 2013.
Under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a prison sentence of two years or more can lead to an MP’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha. If an appellate court stays Rahul’s conviction, then he’s not liable to be disqualified.
The present law around disqualification of convicted MPs is based on a landmark Supreme Court judgment delivered in July 2013.
The judgment did away with the provision of the Representation of the People Act that allowed convicted MPs, MLAs and MLCs to retain their seat until they had exhausted all legal remedies, including appealing before the SC.
In 2013, the Manmohan Singh government brought in an ordinance to nullify the judgment.
The ordinance allowed convicted MPs, MLAs and MLCs to keep their seats if their appeal had been “admitted by a higher court within 90 days and the conviction or sentence stayed”.
It said, however, that the legislators won’t be allowed to vote and won’t get any salary or allowance until the appeal is finally decided.
Additionally, the ordinance stated that this privilege would only be extended to existing tenures, barring convicted lawmakers from contesting again for a period of six years.
The ordinance was criticised by the BJP and the Left, which accused the Congress-led dispensation of protecting convicted criminals.
However, the biggest criticism for the government came from one of their own — Rahul Gandhi — who barged into a press conference on 27 September 2013 and tore into the ordinance.
Rahul, who was the vice-president of the Congress at the time, said the ordinance was “nonsense”. The conference was held by Congress leader Ajay Maken at the Press Club of India in Delhi.
“I am telling you what is happening internally — we need to do this because of political considerations,” Rahul said. “Everybody does this. The Congress party does this, the BJP does this, Janata Dal does this, the Samajwadi Party does this. And there is a time to stop this nonsense,” he added.
The episode was seen as a major embarrassment for the Congress-led government at the time, and as a sign of differences between the party and the government it led.
When senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad quit the party last year, he cited Rahul’s public castigation of the ordinance as “one of the most glaring examples” of his “immaturity”.
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‘It is wrong’
At the press conference, Rahul said political parties should stop “making these small compromises”.
“I really feel it is about time that political parties, mine and all others, stop making these kind of compromises because if we want to actually fight corruption in this country, we cannot continue making these small compromises,” he added.
“I am interested in what the Congress party is doing, I am interested in what our government is doing and I feel, personally feel, what our government has done as far as this ordinance is concerned is wrong.”
The incident took place while PM Singh was on an official visit to the US.
According to reports, Rahul later wrote to Singh saying that his comments were made on “the spur of the moment”, but added that he believed strongly in what he said.
After he returned from the US, Singh met Rahul at a meeting of the Congress core group in October, where it was decided that the government will withdraw the ordinance.
This report has been updated with new information, and to correct an error. Rahul Gandhi didn’t tear up the ordinance, but called for it to be “torn up and thrown away”. The error is regretted.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)