Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday updated his Twitter account bio to ‘Dis’Qualified MP’ after he was disqualified as a Member of Parliament following the Surat court order convicting him in a criminal defamation case over his ‘Modi surname’ remark.
According to sources, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Sunday will hold a day-long ‘Sankalp Padyatra’ near Raj Ghat as a protest against the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a Lok Sabha MP. Rahul Gandhi, on Friday, was disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha, a day after a Surat court sentenced him to two years imprisonment in a defamation case filed against him over his ‘Modi surname’ remark.
The decision was made after he commented in April 2019 at a Lok Sabha election rally in Kolar, Karnataka, “how come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname.” To give Gandhi time to appeal to higher courts, the court granted him bail with a surety and suspended the sentence for 30 days.
After being convicted in the defamation case and subsequently disqualified from Lok Sabha, Gandhi, hit out BJP. While addressing a press conference, Gandhi said that he is not scared of going to prison and his disqualification from Parliament was aimed at distracting people from the Adani issue.
“Moot question remains who invested Rs 20,000 crore in Adani shell firms? I will keep asking the question,” he said. The former MP alleged that the BJP-led central government is allegedly protecting businessman Gautam Adani, who has been accused of stock manipulation.
Attacking PM Modi, he said, “Prime Minister was scared of the next speech that was going to come on Adani. I have seen it in his eyes. That is why, first the distraction and then the disqualification”.
The BJP hit back at him with Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur stating that the central government and Lok Sabha have no role to play in his disqualification and that Rahul Gandhi “is a case of political immaturity”.