The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has given the Home Ministry four weeks – the ask was for eight weeks, i.e., April 21 – to decide on the issue of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship.
Questions around Mr Gandhi’s citizenship – he has been a Lok Sabha MP since 2004 and is currently the Leader of the Opposition – have been doing the rounds for several years now.
The present case is based on a petition filed by a private individual from Karnataka, who has also sought an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The petitioner – a BJP worker called Shishir – claimed he had new information about Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship status.
He claimed to have confidential e-mails to support his claim. “We have direct communication from the UK government that Mr Gandhi is in their citizenship records. “We have presented all the documents. Under Indian laws dual citizenship is not allowed. Once someone takes the citizenship of another nation, Indian citizenship gets cancelled.”
In a previous hearing in this matter (in November last year) a bench of Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Om Prakash Shukla had directed Deputy Solicitor General SB Pandey, appearing for the home ministry, to take directions – yet to be filed so far – about action taken regarding the plea.
The Home Ministry was then given three weeks to respond.
Meanwhile, last month the Delhi High Court, which is hearing an identical plea – filed by ex-BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2019, directed the union government to seeks instructions.
Mr Swamy, who first raised this allegation in 2015, told a bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice TR Gedela that he had written about Mr Gandhi’s citizenship status, but no action was taken.
The Delhi High Court had earlier observed dual proceedings in this case – i.e., the petition in Allahabad and in the national capital – but questioned the centre on its apparent inaction.
Mr Swamy’s plea is based on claims that a former British company – formed in 2003 and dissolved six years later – listed Mr Gandhi as a UK national in some of its records.
The Congress has always dismissed any talk of Mr Gandhi being anything other than Indian. His sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, declared, “Everyone knows Rahul Gandhi is Indian and was born and raised here…” Mr Gandhi himself called the allegation “an endeavour to malign my name”.