A video clip showing Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi apparently dozing off momentarily in the Lok Sabha Wednesday when the party was heatedly raising the anti-dalit violence in Gujarat had the party on the defensive. “You can’t make collective denunciation“, said the Supreme Court bench. “The goal of law is not to turn people to into litigants”, a bench of justice Dipak Misra and Justice Rohinton Nariman told Rahul’s lawyer, Haren Rawal. The bench said that every individual had a fundamental right to live with dignity and reputation, and this “cannot be sullied exclusively because another individual can have his freedom”. What is curbed is the right to speak freely. “What the writers, politicians, critics or antagonists say, you must have great magnitude to swallow”, it said. Judgement is already there.
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At the same time, the Bench also told petitioner and RSS activist Rajesh Mahadeo Kunte’s counsel that the goal of the defamation law was not to promote litigation, reminding him that “history is the biggest enemy of privacy”.
The apex court had on May 7 past year stayed the proceedings against the Congress vice-president, pending before a magisterial court in Bhiwandi of Maharashtra’s Thane district.
Secondly, any case in court enables opposition politicians to quickly claim that they are being victimised by the powers-that-be, and it is the accusers who have to prove their bonafides.
Mr Gandhi in a public rally in Thane district in March 2014 said, “RSS people killed Gandhiji and today their people (BJP) talk of him…”
“On a suggestion of Shri Rahul Gandhi expressing regret or apology, the question does not arise”.
I don’t blame Rahul Gandhi tor sleeping in Parliament.
Gandhi was accompanied by the party’s Gujarat affairs in-charge Gurudas Kamat, state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki and other party leaders here as well as the party’s Dalit leader Kumari Selja. He said since the matter is pending adjudication, “we will not like to comment further on the issue”.
To add to the drama, despite an earlier Supreme Court stay on proceedings, Rahul appeared in the Bhiwandi court on May 8 and later approached the High Court against the complaint.
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Gandhi said “deception was not a new thing” for the Modi government and “they were skilled at ignoring facts”.
