A BJP parliamentarian from Gujarat was given protection from disqualification for 16 days till he got legal relief after being convicted of assaulting a Dalit doctor in 2016, the Congress pointed out, drawing a parallel with the whirlwind action against Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul was disqualified as MP of Wayanad in Kerala within 24 hours of his conviction in a defamation case related to the Modi surname.

The difference in the handling of the two cases by the Lok Sabha secretariat flies in the face of the Narendra Modi government’s and the BJP’s claim that the law took its course in Rahul’s case and there was no scope for the Speaker exercising his discretion, the Congress pointed out.

The BJP’s Amreli MP, Naranbhai Kachhadiya, was convicted by a local court and sentenced to imprisonment for three years for assaulting anon-duty doctor who had failed to receive his call. The verdict was delivered on April 13, 2016. The MP appealed to the sessions court, pleading that his conviction be stayed because the sentence of three years would disqualify him as MP. Thecourt gave him bail but refused to stay the conviction.

Congress leaders from Gujarat promptly petitioned the then Lok Sabha Speaker, the President and the Election Commission, seeking his disqualification, but nothing happened. Kachhadiya went to Gujarat High Court, which refused to grant him relief. Congress leaders again petitioned the Lok Sabha Speaker, the President and the EC, arguing that the high court too had upheld the conviction. But the system didn’t move.

Kachhadiya approached the Supreme Court and pleaded for mercy as he would be disqualified for what he said was an unintentional crime. The bench of Justices N.V. Ramanna and Madan V. Lokur asked the MP to tender an apology and pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the victim. Kachhadiya was acquitted on April 29, 16 days after the conviction by the lower court.

There lies the rub: Rahul has not been as lucky because he is not only a leader of the main Opposition Congress but the only politician who has relentlessly asked the Modi government uncomfortable questions in the Lok Sabha and outside.

While Rahul hadn’t committed any heinous crime and the purported “insult” to the Modi community is debatable and presumed, Kachhadiya had assaulted a doctor inside a hospital.

Kachhadiya had got angry because the doctor, Bhimji Dabhi, had failed to take his call. The MP had called Dabhi to urgently attend to the injured son of a local BJP leader. The doctor said he had kept his phone on silent mode because he was attending to another patient. Somebody from the BJP tried to make the doctor talk to Kachhadiya on his phone, but Dabhi said he would take the call after seeing the other patient. Soon, Kachhadiya arrived at the hospital with 15-20 people and assaulted the doctor.

As the doctor was a Dalit, the enormity of the crime was bigger because provisions of the SC-ST Prevention of Atrocities Act were also applicable. The doctor had also accused Kachhadiya of hurling caste-specific abuse.

The BJP has accused Rahul of insulting the “Modi community” as a whole by equating some with thieves. There is no “Modi community”; people from the Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Jain communities use the Modi surname. Rahul’s politics bears no evidence of any grudge against any community and the context of his speech was corruption, not caste.

But Kachhadiya not only survived as MP, he was again given a ticket by the BJP in 2019. He is now a sitting MP.

Explaining the duplicity of senior BJP leaders and ministers, Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said on Wednesday: “They said Rahul was disqualified by law and there was no scope for the discretion of the Speaker. This is false. Article 14 of the Constitution says everybody is equal before the law. But Rahul was disqualified within hours and Kachhadiya was given weeks.”