Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday vacated the official bungalow allotted to him in Delhi in accordance with an order issued by the Lok Sabha Secretariat on March 27.

On March 23, a court in Gujarat sentenced Gandhi to two years’ imprisonment in a criminal defamation case. He was found guilty in a case related to his speech ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which he referred to thieves as having the surname Modi.

A day later, the Congress leader was disqualified as a member of Parliament. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a legislator sentenced to jail for two years or more stands to be disqualified from the date of conviction until six years after serving time. Three days after Gandhi was disqualified as an MP, he was asked to leave the government bungalow allotted to him.

The former Wayanad MP on Saturday told the media that he had paid the price for speaking the truth. “I am willing to pay any price for the truth,” he asserted.

After a journalist said that there was a possibility that Gandhi may have been allowed to stay at the bungalow if he had made a request, the Congress leader said: “I do not wish to stay here. The people of India gave me this house, and I stayed here for 19 years. Now, if it has been snatched from me, that is alright.”

Gandhi said that he will now stay with his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi for now.

On April 20, a Surat sessions court rejected the Congress leader’s appeal seeking a stay on his conviction. The court said that as a member of Parliament and the former president of the country’s second-largest political party, he should have been more careful with his words.