Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, filed a petition to have the criminal defamation suit against him dismissed by the Jharkhand High Court on Friday. The suit was brought after Gandhi was accused of making disparaging remarks about Amit Shah, the leader of the BJP, in 2018. Following the court’s presentation of Gandhi’s written version on February 16, Justice Ambujnath’s bench reserved the verdict. The issue concerns an election speech delivered by the outgoing Congress president in Chaibasa during the 2018 Congress session.
BJP leader Naveen Jha, who has filed the defamation suit in Jharkhand High Court, had alleged Rahul Gandhi had made objectionable remarks against the then BJP national president Amit Shah.
Gandhi was granted bail on February 20, by a special court in Sultanpur in a defamation case filed by BJP leader Vijay Mishra on August 4, 2018, against Gandhi for allegedly making objectionable comments against Shah at a press conference in Bengaluru on May 8 that year during Karnataka elections.
Gandhi mentioned in his speech the BJP’s assertion of honest politics in spite of the fact that Shah, the party president, was a “accused” in a murder case. Shah made this remark while serving as the president of the BJP. In 2005, while Shah was serving as the Gujarati Minister of State for Home, he was found not guilty in a fictitious encounter case by a special CBI court in Mumbai four years prior. Due to his obligations to the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Rahul Gandhi was unable to attend the previous hearing in the MP-MLA court on January 18.
