An Uttar Pradesh court on Wednesday ordered Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to appear before it on July 2 in connection with a defamation case, reported PTI.
The case was filed in August 2018 on the complaint of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Vijay Mishra. The BJP leader alleged that Gandhi had made objectionable remarks against home minister and former BJP President Amit Shah in May 2018, during the Karnataka Assembly elections.
On Wednesday, the special court for MPs and MLAs in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur district summoned the Congress leader on a plea by a man named Ram Pratap, who sought to become a party to the defamation case.
Lawyer Santosh Kumar Pandey, representing Mishra, opposed the petition on the grounds that Pratap was neither a victim of Gandhi’s comments nor had anything to do with the matter, reported PTI.
Lawyer Kashi Prasad Shukla, representing Gandhi, also opposed Pratap’s petition, which was dismissed by the court. However, Gandhi was asked to be present in court on the next date of hearing in the original defamation case.
At a press conference in Bengaluru in May 2018, Gandhi had said that while the BJP claimed to believe in clean politics, its party president had been accused in a murder case. Shah was serving as the Hindutva party’s president at the time.
In February 2014, a special court in Mumbai had discharged Shah in a 2005 case pertaining to the alleged extra-judicial killing of a man named Sohrabuddin Sheikh.
In February this year, the court in Sultanpur had granted bail to Gandhi in the defamation case.
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