Rahul Gandhi used Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name to sensationalise and influence the result of elections with his speech on the Modi surname in 2019, the Gujarat High Court said on Friday, reported Bar and Bench.

Justice Hemant Prachchhak had upheld on Friday the Congress leader’s conviction in a criminal defamation case for his remark about the Modi surname. Gandhi had been sentenced to two years imprisonment by a Surat court on March 23 in the case registered on a complaint by Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Purnesh Modi. The Congress leader is out on bail.

His conviction had led to his immediate disqualification as the Lok Sabha member under the Representation of the People Act, 1951. According to Section 8(3) of the law, a legislator sentenced to jail for two years or more stands to be disqualified from the date of conviction till six years after serving time.

The case pertains to Gandhi’s remarks at a rally in Karnataka’s Kolar ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. “Why all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have Modi in their names?” the 52-year-old Congress leader had asked.

Nirav Modi is a fugitive businessman accused in the Punjab National Bank scam while Lalit Modi is a former Indian Premier League chief who has been banned for life by the cricket governing body.

Purnesh Modi had alleged in his complaint that Gandhi’s remarks were defamatory to 13 crore people living in India who have the surname Modi.

In its 125-page verdict, the High Court said that Gandhi defamed a large identifiable class and not just an individual.

The judgement also said that Gandhi is a senior leader of the oldest political party in India and due to his public standing, any utterance by him attracts large scale publication “gravely impairing and damaging” the reputation of the complainant and the Modi community.

“Therefore, the mere fact that the maximum punishment is of two years [for defamation], would not come to the aid of the petitioner in order to convince the court to disregard the seriousness of the present offence,” the High Court said.

It added: “The present conviction is a serious matter affecting a large segment of the society and needs to be viewed by this court with the gravity and significance it commands.”

Justice Prachchhak also cited a complaint filed by grandson of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar in April as one of the grounds on which Gandhi’s plea was dismissed. In April, Satyaki Savarkar had filed a defamation case against Gandhi for his comments against the Hindutva ideologue in London.

It said that the need of the hour is to have “purity in politics” and that representatives of people should be persons of clear antecedent. Hence, the High Court said that Gandhi’s request for a stay on his conviction was based on “absolutely non-existent” grounds.

However, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who represented the politician in the case, said on Friday that the judgement is faulty and will be challenged in the Supreme Court. Singhvi also emphasised on the uniqueness of the grounds on which the judgment was passed, saying that there is no parallel or relevance to the law of defamation in India.

“The pattern of such complaints show it is motivated,” Singhvi said in a press conference. “There is a sad reference to a Veer Savarkar issue. How can it be made a major basis of the judgement when the ‘Veer Savarkar complaint’ was after a month of the primary complaint?”

Singhvi also alleged that the judgement has made it sound like Gandhi has committed a serious offence. He questioned why the law only prescribes two year maximum punishment for defamation if it was that serious an offence.