NEW DELHI : Rahul Gandhi, the head of the Congress, was selected for the parliamentary standing committee on defence just a few days after being re-elected as a member of parliament. Gandhi served as a member of the parliamentary panel on defence before being disqualified in March. Rahul Gandhi’s membership in the Lok Sabha was reinstated earlier on August 7 by the Lok Sabha Secretariat following the Supreme Court’s stay of his conviction in the “Modi” surname remark case on August 4. In March 2023, the Congress leader who had been barred from the Lower House was re-elected as the MP for Wayanad.In an interim ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court halted Gandhi’s conviction in the criminal defamation case involving the remark about the “Modi surname.” On an appeal from the Congress leader disputing the Gujarat High Court judgement, the Supreme Court gave notice to the Gujarat government in July. Rahul was sentenced to two years in prison by the Surat court for making the statement about the “Modi surname” in the criminal defamation case in which the Gujarat High Court had earlier declined to stay his conviction. Gandhi lost his seat as a member of parliament for Kerala’s Wayanad on March 24 following his conviction in the case. Amar Singh, a Congress member, has also been named to the committee, according to a Lok Sabha bulletin. Sushil Kumar Rinku, a recently elected Lok Sabha member from the Aam Aadmi Party, has been proposed for the committee on agriculture, animal husbandry, and food processing. Rinku, the lone AAP representative in the Lower House of Parliament, just won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by election.