Rahul to launch agitation on April 5 from Kolar

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will begin the party’s nationwide ‘Satyamev Jayate’ agitation on April 5 from Kolar, the very place where he made a remark on the Modi surname for which he was convicted of criminal defamation and was stripped of his Parliament membership, party state president D K Shivakumar said on Wednesday.

The KPCC chief said this during a joint press meet with senior party leader and former Union Minister Anand Sharma. “The Rahul Gandhi disqualification issue began with his speech in Kolar. On April 5, Rahul Gandhi will come to Kolar and begin his Satyameva Jayate agitation from there, which will go across the country,” Shivakumar said, adding, “We asked him to begin from here. He has agreed and the preparations are on for it.”

Gandhi would give a “message of change from the very soil of Kolar”, in the presence of AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge and other leaders, he said. On March 23, Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail by a court in Gujarat’s Surat in a 2019 criminal defamation case over his “why all thieves have the Modi surname” remark. A day later, he was disqualified from the Lok Sabha restrospectively from the date of his conviction in the case. Gandhi reportedly made those remarks in Kolar in April 2019. Speaking about his disqualification as MP, Sharma said it was settled law that if there was any reference made to any unidentifiable and indeterminate community, no charge of criminal defamation could ever be levelled.

He said, “A non-existent charge of criminal defamation and maximum punishment (of two years) was given within three weeks, and subsequent disqualification in 18 hours. That’s what happened. This judgment was a flawed judgment; it will be trashed and reversed by the higher judiciary.”