Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, March 24: The Congress party strongly criticised Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha on Friday, calling it a ‘strangulation of democracy’ and expressing confidence that the exclusion will be overturned by a higher court’s stay of his conviction.
The party said that Rahul’s disqualification is a part of a ‘pattern’ designed to prevent him from criticising the Central administration and a means of deflecting attention away from more pressing matters.
After his conviction in a defamation case by the Surat court for a statement he made using the ‘Modi surname’ at a rally in Karnataka prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Gandhi was earlier on Friday banned as a member of the Lower House.
Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the national spokesman for the Congress, and senior politician Jairam Ramesh criticised the Centre during a news conference held at the party’s headquarters in the capital.
“The issue before us is political, more than it is legal. It is a political issue because it signifies the systematic, repetitive emasculation of democratic institutions by the ruling party. It signifies the strangulation of democracy itself. We know that defamation is an exception to free speech, but over the last several years, we have had repeated examples of unthinkable assaults on freedom of speech, more importantly, freedom after speech. We all know that Rahul Gandhi has been speaking fearlessly inside and outside Parliament. He is paying a price for it,” Singhvi said.
“This government is rattled because he clearly speaks with facts and figures on demonetisation. Be it the supposed clean chit to China, or the GST, he is consistently aggressive and open in his questioning. Therefore this government is finding new techniques of throttling his voice,” Ramesh alleged.
In response to the harsh criticism levelled by the BJP following Rahul Gandhi’s recent comments about Indian democracy in the UK, Singhvi said that the Congressman is not allowed to talk freely due to “false and fictitious nationalism.”
“We are confident that we will get a stay on his conviction, which will, in turn, remove the very basis of this disqualification. We have full faith in the law. We believe we will emerge victorious in the near future,” he added.
