Hearing in a defamation case involving senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi could not be held in the MP-MLA court in Sultanpur on Monday as the special judge was on leave.

Gandhi's advocate Kashi Prasad Shukla said as Special Judge Shubham Verma was on leave, no hearing could take place.

August 23 has been fixed as the next date of hearing, he added.

On July 26, Gandhi appeared before the MP-MLA court here in a defamation case against him and said it was filed to gain "cheap publicity".

According to Shukla, the Congress MP, who appeared before the special judge, said he never made a statement against anyone that could lead to a case of defamation against him.

The court had fixed August 12 as the date of hearing.

Local BJP leader Vijay Mishra had filed a complaint on August 4, 2018, against Gandhi for his alleged objectionable comments against Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a press conference in Bengaluru in May of that year during the Karnataka assembly elections.

The complainant referred to Gandhi's comment that the BJP claims to believe in honest and clean politics but has a party president who is an "accused" in a murder case. Shah was the BJP president when Gandhi made the comment.

About four years before Gandhi's remark, a special CBI court in Mumbai had discharged Shah in a 2005 fake encounter case when he was a minister of state for home in Gujarat.

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