The Supreme Court on Friday imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on a Lucknow-based advocate who challenged the restoration of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha Membership after his conviction and two-year sentence in Modi surname remark defamation case that was stayed by the top court on 4 August, 2023.

Imposing a cost of Rs 1 lakh on a Lucknow-based advocate, Ashok Pandey, a bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta found the petition to be “frivolous and a waste of judicial time.”

Rahul Gandhi represents Kerala’s Wayanad Lok Sabha seat.

Advocate Ashok Pandey had challenged the restoration of Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership, who was disqualified from the Lower House membership after a Gujarat court convicted and sentenced him to two-year imprisonment in the criminal defamation case over ‘Modi surname’ remark during a public rally before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

On 20 March, 2023, a magisterial court in Gujarat convicted Rahul Gandhi and sentenced him to two years imprisonment, maximum under the defamation law. After the magisterial court convicted Gandhi, he approached the sessions court, which rejected his plea for a stay on his conviction on 20 April, 2023. Thereafter, he approached the High Court, which had on 7 July, 2023 affirmed the decision of the sessions court and refused to interfere with Rahul Gandhi’s conviction.

Earlier on 20 October, 2023, the top court dismissed Pandey’s plea and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on him for challenging the restoration of Lok Sabha membership of Nationalist Congress Party Leader Mohammed Faizal. The top court had said, “We are not going to entertain the petition just because your name can appear in the newspaper.”

Challenging Gandhi’s restoration, Pandey had said that once he lost his Lok Sabha membership after being convicted in a criminal defamation case and was awarded two years of imprisonment, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha was not justified in restoring his lost membership.

Pandey has contended that once a member of Parliament or of a state legislature loses his office by operation of law in Article 102, 191 of the Constitution, read with section 8 (3) of the Representation of People Act 1951, he will continue to be disqualified till he is acquitted of the charges levelled against him by some higher court.

“Rahul Gandhi lost his membership of Lok Sabha when he was convicted for defamation and awarded a two-year sentence, and, as such, the Speaker was not right in restoring his membership,” Pandey had stated in his plea.

Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail on 23 March, 2023, under sections 499 and 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in a case filed by BJP leader Purnesh Modi.

At a rally in Karnataka’s Kolar in April 2019, Rahul Gandhi, taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had said, “How come all the thieves have Modi surname?”.