Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was ousted from parliament 24 hours after he was found guilty of libel over claims that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a criminal.
Leading members of Gandhi’s Congress party met Friday morning to discuss the conviction and his two-year prison sentence when they received word of his expulsion.
Gandhi will not go to jail immediately because the court has given him 30 days bail to appeal the sentence. If the Court of Appeal overturns Gandhi’s conviction, he will be able to take his seat again.
The party knows that, under Indian law, anyone who receives a two-year prison term is automatically disqualified from holding MP positions. But she assumed that Gandhi would have time to first appeal to a higher court. Instead, the Speaker’s office informed Gandhi that he was not eligible to be a legislator from the moment of his conviction.
The case began after a remark made during the 2019 election campaign in which he asked Gandhi, a leading figure in the Congress party, why “all the thieves have the same surname Modi.”
Source: The Guardian