Court Denies Indian Opposition Leader’s Petition to Suspend Conviction

Rahul Gandhi, India’s top opposition leader, faced another setback on Friday when a court in the state of Gujarat denied his request to stay his conviction in a defamation case, a move that leaves him at risk of imprisonment and possibly unable to run in national elections next year.

Mr. Gandhi, the most prominent leader of the Indian National Congress party, was sentenced to two years in prison in March in connection with a 2019 campaign speech in which he likened Prime Minister Narendra Modi to two Indians accused of swindling money who shared the same last name.

A member of Mr. Modi’s party, who also shared the Modi name, argued that the remark was offensive and filed a lawsuit. The sentence, the maximum for defamation cases, automatically disqualified Mr. Gandhi from his seat in Parliament. Members of the opposition have called the case politically motivated.

The Gujarat High Court, where Mr. Gandhi had filed a petition seeking a stay on his conviction, said there was no reasonable ground to suspend it. “The conviction is just, proper and legal,” said Justice Hemant Prachchhak, who heard the review plea at the high court.

Mr. Gandhi, 53, is out on bail, and his last option is to advance the case to India’s Supreme Court for final review. His party has said he will do so.

His case is the latest example of what opposition parties have long accused Mr. Modi of: using branches of the government, including the police and the courts, to quash dissent and bog down political opponents and critics of his government.

One of India’s premier law enforcement agencies that answer indirectly to Mr. Modi, the Enforcement Directorate, is being increasingly accused of conducting raids on places connected to political opponents of Mr. Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.

Mr. Gandhi is among the most vocal of the national opposition leaders, and his legal woes are stymieing him at a time when he was trying to build momentum and to unite various political opposition groups around his party. He had rallied the public with a grass-roots march across India — some 2,000 miles over five months — during which he railed against Mr. Modi’s power.

In actively seeking the public’s support, Mr. Gandhi, the scion of a once-mighty political dynasty, positioned himself as a main challenger to Mr. Modi, who remains popular with Indian voters.

After his conviction in March in a lower court, Mr. Gandhi approached the high court in Gujarat seeking a stay of the conviction. As long as that conviction stands, Indian law bars him from competing in elections and from Parliament.

“The use of defamation law is being utilized to crush a voice,” Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a member of the Indian National Congress, said after the high court verdict. “But that doesn’t mean Rahul Gandhi is afraid. He will continue to walk on the path of truth.”

Lawmakers from the B.J.P. praised Friday’s ruling.

One of them, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said Mr. Gandhi’s remarks were a direct attack on members of lower-caste groups, including the one with which Mr. Modi is often associated, who have faced discrimination in India for centuries.

“It has become a chronic habit of Mr. Rahul Gandhi to abuse, to defame and shower the worst kind of abuses against eminent leaders and organizations,” he said.