Panaji: Stating that the Congress party must learn to respect judiciary, democratic institutions and democracy, the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said that the Congress party should not talk about protesting against the disqualification of its leader Rahul Gandhi as a member of the Lok Sabha.

The development came a day after a trial court in Gujarat sentenced him to two years in jail in a criminal defamation case as regards his ‘Modi surname’ remark that he had made in Karnataka in 2019. The state BJP spokesperson Yatish Naik said that in this case, the law has caught up with an individual and the individual has to bear the consequences. “No individual is above the law,” he maintained.

Speaking further, Naik said that by virtue of his two-year conviction, Rahul Gandhi has automatically ceased to be the member of the House under Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. “There is no hand of the Bharatiya Janata Party in all these things,” he noted, mentioning that the things have moved as per the legal process.

Meanwhile, the president of the Goa Forward Party and the Fatorda legislator Vijai Sardesai described the occurrence as “setting of a wrong precedence.”

“Criminal defamation is an ambiguous area, and completely eliminating a politician from the electoral scenario by using the same is a wrong precedence,” Sardesai observed, pointing out that the same tactic would be very much misused in the future. He also said that only public should be able to disqualify the politician through ballot.