SC Dismisses ‘Frivolous’ Petition on Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha Membership Restoration

The Supreme Court on Friday expressed strong disapproval of the filing of “frivolous” petitions and dismissed a plea seeking the quashing of an August 7, 2023, notification that reinstated the Lok Sabha membership of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The Lok Sabha membership was restored following a Supreme Court order staying his conviction in a 2019 defamation case over his ‘Modi’ surname remark.

The top court had stayed the conviction on August 4, 2023, in the defamation case. Rahul Gandhi represents Wayanad in the Lower House of Parliament.

The plea, filed by Lucknow-based Ashok Pandey, was heard by a bench of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta. The bench noted that Pandey did not appear before it despite the matter being called twice for a hearing. Referring to two previous orders on separate petitions by the petitioner, the bench highlighted that the court had dismissed those petitions with costs of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 1 lakh, respectively.

Observing that filing such frivolous petitions wastes both the court’s precious time and the entire registry’s resources, the bench dismissed the plea and imposed a cost of Rs 1 lakh.

The petitioner had named the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Union of India, the Election Commission of India, and Rahul Gandhi as respondents in the plea. The bench noted that the issue raised in this petition was identical to the one in the petitioner’s earlier plea, dismissed in October last year with a cost of Rs 1 lakh.

In the October-dismissed plea, the petitioner challenged the restoration of Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership. Last year, the Supreme Court had also imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on the petitioner for claiming in a separate PIL that the oath taken by the Bombay High Court chief justice was “defective.”

Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as an MP on March 24 last year after a Gujarat court convicted and sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment for criminal defamation over comments made about the Modi surname. The Gujarat High Court later dismissed his petition for a stay on conviction, emphasizing the need for “purity in politics.” The Supreme Court had subsequently stayed his conviction in the case.

In 2019, BJP leader Purnesh Modi filed a criminal defamation case against Gandhi for his “How come all thieves have Modi as the common surname?” remark during an election rally in Kolar, Karnataka, on April 13, 2019.