Supreme Court slaps ₹1 lakh cost on lawyer for filing PIL against reinstatement of Rahul Gandhi to Lok Sabha

The Supreme Court on Friday imposed a cost of ₹1 lakh on a lawyer who filed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition challenging the reinstatement of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to the Lok Sabha..A bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta found the petition filed by Ashok Pandey to be frivolous and a waste of judicial time. .Pandey, an advocate, moved the Court seeking the quashing of the notification that restored Gandhi's status as a member of the Lok Sabha..Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha in March last year after he was convicted by a magistrate court in Surat for defamation over a remark that he had made at an election rally in Karnataka's Kolar constituency in 2019.Gandhi was accused of linking Prime Minister Narendra Modi with fugitives like Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi while speaking at the rally when he said, "all thieves have Modi surname."Since Gandhi was sentenced to two years of imprisonment by the Surat court, he was automatically disqualified from parliament. Later, a sessions court and the Gujarat High Court refused to stay his conviction. He then approached the Supreme Court for relief.In August 2023, the Supreme Court stayed Gandhi's conviction and said that the trial court had not given any specific reasons for imposing the maximum punishment prescribed under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for the offence of defamation. The top court's stay order paved the way for Gandhi's reinstatement to the Lok Sabha. .Pandey, who unsuccessfully challenged this restoration of Gandhi's Lok Sabha membership, has earlier also faced similar dismissals with costs from the top court.In October last year, the Supreme Court dismissed his PIL challenging the appointment of Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya as Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court with ₹5 lakh cost. In this plea, Pandey had claimed that the oath administered to Justice Upadhyaya was defective.Similarly, a fine of ₹1 lakh was imposed on Pandey by the top court while dismissing his petition challenging the restoration of Lok Sabha membership of Nationalist Congress Party Leader Mohammed Faizal.