Lucknow, Dec. 5 -- The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Thursday dismissed a petition seeking the disqualification of Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi from the Lok Sabha. The petition, filed by a local advocate Ashok Pandey, sought Rahul Gandhi's removal from Lok Sabha on the ground that he was disqualified from being a Member of Parliament (MP) due to his conviction by a Gujarat court in a defamation case. However, the high court noted that the conviction was stayed by the Supreme Court in August 2023. Passing the order, a division bench of Justice Shekhar B Saraf and Justice Manjive Shukla said that once a conviction is stayed, the disqualification under Section 8(3) does not operate. "We are of the view that no substantial question of law arises in the present matter, as the matter has been categorically settled by the Supreme Court and is no longer res integra (not bound by prior decisions)," the high court observed. Rahul Gandhi was elected as MP from Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In the petition, Pandey claimed that Rahul Gandhi was automatically disqualified under Section 8(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 after being found guilty and sentenced to two years' imprisonment by a Surat court in 2023 for defamation. According to Pandey, the returning officer wrongly accepted Gandhi's nomination even though he was ineligible to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The high court disagreed with these claims. The Bench rejected this distinction, holding that the legal effect of a stay of conviction is the same irrespective of whether the apex court expressly mentions contesting elections. It stated that the question before it was already conclusively addressed by the Supreme Court and did not raise any new issue requiring reconsideration. With this observation, the high court dismissed the plea....