SURAT: Gujarat BJP MLA Purnesh Modi filed his objection in a court here on Tuesday in response to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s plea for a stay of his conviction in a defamation case over his “Modi surname” remark, his lawyer said.

The MLA is the complainant in the criminal defamation case in which a metropolitan court in Surat on March 23 sentenced Gandhi to two years in jail after holding him guilty over his 2019 remark, “How come all thieves have Modi as common surname?”, leading to his LS disqualification.