New Delhi: Senior party leader, Jairam Ramesh levelled a serious charge this afternoon and said that it was “nine days after Rahul Gandhi’s Adani speech in LS on Feb 7th, the defamation case against him gets fast tracked by the complainant withdrawing his own stay in the HC on 16th Feb. On 27th Feb arguments resume after 1 year. 17th March judgement reserved.” He said that, “This is not a coincidence.”
9 days after @RahulGandhi's Adani speech in LS on Feb 7th, the defamation case against him gets fast tracked by the complainant withdrawing his own stay in the HC on 16th Feb.
On 27th Feb arguments resume after 1 year.
17th March judgement reserved.This is no coincidence.
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 24, 2023
The Congress has alleged that there is causation, not merely correlation between the resumption of the hearings in Surat against Rahul Gandhi, after a curious suspension with the complainant seeking to delay proceedings. It is the defendant who usually does that.
The case was filed on April 16, 2019, and Rahul Gandhi appeared in the court of the then CJM, Surat, A.N. Dave on June 24, 2021, to record his statement in person. The case was filed by a Gujarat state cabinet minister and three-times MLA from Surat West, in March 2022, when the complainant’s request for Rahul Gandhi to be summoned again was rejected by the CJM who insisted arguments commence immediately, the complainant rushed to the high court and sought a stay on the trial’s proceedings. This was granted on March 7, 2022.
After a break of 11 months, the complainant went back to the high court on February 16, 2023, seeking vacation of the stay, pleading that “sufficient evidence has come on record of the trial court and the pendency of the present matter delays the trial”. Though no new evidence had come on record since the stay and the “pendency of the matter” was entirely at his own instance, the complainant was granted the relief he sought.
Complainant Purnesh Modi’s decision to restart a trial he had himself put on hold for a year came barely a week after Rahul Gandhi had launched a sharp attack on Narendra Modi in parliament over his links to controversial businessman Gautam Adani.
Rahul Gandhi in parliament, in what was his last speech. Photo: Twitter/@RahulGandhi
The Lok Sabha speech by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on February 7 seems to have set other things in motion too, far away from Surat, in parliament. Portions of Gandhi’s speech that hit out at the prime minister for allegedly facilitating the unencumbered growth of Adani Group were expunged from the parliamentary records at the behest of speaker Om Birla on February 8. 18 portions were knocked out.
It is hard to prove that there is a direct Adani connection to the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi from Lok Sabha, but the sequence of events raises enough questions about such a possibility. The government would be hard-pressed to deny such a linkage with any authority, considering how PM Modi has avoided a response to any mention of Adani.