The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a petition seeking to disqualify Congress president Rahul Gandhi from contesting Lok Sabha elections over his dual citizenship. This comes two days after the Centre issued a notice to Gandhi seeking the “factual position” on his citizenship within a fortnight.
In their petition before the Supreme Court, a group of activists have demanded that Gandhi’s name should be removed from electoral rolls and sought his disqualification from contesting Lok Sabha polls.
The notice by the Union Home Ministry on Monday came on a complaint from Subramanian Swamy who claimed that Rahul Gandhi was a British national. A Home Ministry official said Swamy had first sent a complaint on Gandhi’s citizenship issue in September 2017 and wrote a reminder recently.
A communication from Home Ministry said Swamy’s letter also mentioned that in a British company’s annual returns filed on October 10, 2005, and October 31, 2006, Rahul Gandhi’s date of birth has been given as June 19, 1970, and he had declared his nationality as British.
As a row erupted, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the notice is a normal process and “not a big development” and that the timing of the communication is not relevant.
The issue of Gandhi’s dual citizenship was first raised by BJP leader Subramanium Swamy in 2015, where he had written to the Prime Minister to deny the Congress president Indian citizenship. In November 2015, the Supreme Court has dismissed a public interest litigation demanding CBI probe into the citizenship row noting that PILs were not meant to target one individual or organisation but was a medium to resolve human suffering through good governance.
A bench of then Chief Justice of India H L Dattu and Justice Amitava Roy had rubbished the plea questioning the source and authenticity of the documents attached to a petition.
In 2016, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had forwarded to the parliamentary ethics committee, headed by veteran BJP leader L K Advani, Swamy’s “complaint of ethical misconduct” against Gandhi that he had accessed documents in which the Congress leader had called himself “British”.
In his reply to the ethics committee on the allegations of British citizenship, Gandhi had said he had never “sought or acquired British citizenship” and that his “identity is that of an Indian”.
He also questioned the committee’s decision to look into a “complaint that is not in order”, claiming it was “an endeavour to malign” him.
The panel had issued a notice to him, seeking an explanation to whether he had once declared himself a British citizen on the legal papers of a company in the United Kingdom.
Agencies
