NEW DELHI: After the Gujarat high court (HC) dismissed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's plea seeking a stay on his conviction in a criminal defamation case over his 'Modi surname' remark on Friday, the Congress party has now decided that they will approach the Supreme Court's doors for relief. 

The HC noted that there was no reasonable ground to stay the conviction handed over by a  metropolitan magistrate's court in Surat on March 23 which had convicted him under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499 and 500 (criminal defamation) in a 2019 case filed by Gujarat Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) MLA Purnesh Modi.

On April 13, 2019, during an election rally at Kolar in Karnataka, Rahul Gandhi had remarked,  'How come all thieves have Modi as the common surname?'

Dismissing his plea to set aside Rahul Gandhi's conviction of two-year jail term the HC judge Justice Hemant Prachchhak said that the sentence was 'just, proper and legal' while noting that Gandhi was already facing 10 criminal cases across India.

As per the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, Rahul who was the elected Member of Parliament (MP)  of Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala since 2019, was disqualified as an MP. 

While the HC has now asked the Surat district and sessions court of Surat to hear Rahul Gandhi's appeal against the conviction in an expeditious manner, the Congress party's legal counsels have decided to knock on the Supreme Court's doors for relief.

Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil who led a protest against the verdict told reporters that since Rahul Gandhi had made the statement in Karnataka (during the 2019 polls), it was not under the jurisdiction of Surat court (where the suit was filed). 

"It is the right as well as the responsibility of political leaders to speak if something wrong was happening. Speaking about (businessmen) Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi, who fled after looting the country's wealth, is not a crime," Gohil said.