NEW DELHI: India’s parliament was adjourned on Monday after noisy protests by opposition lawmakers over the expulsion of top opposition figure Rahul Gandhi from the legislature.

Gandhi was stripped of his parliamentary seat last Friday in a move that critics say heightens concerns about creeping authoritarianism in the world’s largest democracy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has been widely accused by political opponents and rights groups of using the legal system to target and silence critics.

Members of Gandhi’s Indian National Congress party wore black shirts and scarves as parliament opened on Monday. Some threw paper at the speaker, who then adjourned proceedings.

“I want to run the House with dignity,” Speaker Om Birla said. “Proceedings of the House are adjourned till 4 p.m.”

Gandhi’s expulsion came a day after he was convicted of defamation in Modi’s home state of Gujarat for a 2019 campaign-trail remark seen as an insult to the premier.

Gandhi, 52, is the leading face of Congress, once the dominant force of Indian politics, but now a shadow of its former self.

He is the scion of India’s most famous political dynasty and the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

But he has failed to challenge the electoral juggernaut of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its nationalist appeals to the South Asian nation’s Hindu majority.

The legislature’s lower house ruled him ineligible to continue sitting as a member of parliament last Friday, a day after his conviction in the defamation case.

The prosecution stemmed from a remark made during the 2019 election campaign, during which Gandhi had asked why “all thieves have Modi as [their] common surname.”

His comments were portrayed as a slur against the prime minister, who went on to win the election in a landslide.

Members of the government also said the remark was a smear against all those sharing the Modi surname, associated with the lower rungs of India’s traditional caste hierarchy.

Gandhi was sentenced to two years in prison last Thursday, but walked free on bail after his lawyers vowed to appeal.

A BJP spokesman said that day the court acted with “due judicial process” in arriving at its judgment.

Legal action has been widely deployed against opposition party figures and institutions seen as critical of the Modi government in recent years.

Gandhi faces several other defamation cases and a money-laundering case that has been snaking its way through India’s glacial legal system for more than a decade.

The Editors Guild of India said there was also a wider “trend of using government agencies to intimidate or harass press organizations that are critical of government policies.”

Last Saturday, Gandhi, who recently completed a walk across India that was hailed as a success by commentators, said he would “do whatever I have to do to defend the democratic nature of this country.”