Tribune News Service
New Delhi, April 30
In a move which has the potential to keep the poll pot boiling this election season, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has served a notice on Congress president Rahul Gandhi to clarify the “factual position” in 15 days on a complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy questioning his citizenship status.
Incidentally, in November 2015, the Supreme Court had rejected a PIL seeking a CBI investigation into the citizenship of Gandhi while questioning the source and authenticity of the documents attached.
The MHA said it has been brought out that a company named Backops Limited was registered in the UK in 2003 with Gandhi as a director.
Further quoting the complaint letter, the MHA said it also mentioned that in the British company’s annual returns filed on October 10, 2005, and October 31, 2006, Gandhi had declared his nationality as British. “Further, in the dissolution application dated February 17, 2009, of the company, your nationality has been mentioned as British,” it added.
As a row erupted over the issue with ruling BJP and Congress exchanging barbs, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, it is a normal process and “not a big development”.
Meanwhile, in 2016, LS Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had forwarded to the Parliamentary Ethics Committee, headed by BJP’s LK Advani, the “complaint of ethical misconduct” by Dr Swamy against Gandhi that he had accessed documents in which the Congress leader had declared himself “British”.
In his reply, Gandhi had said he had never “sought or acquired British citizenship” and that his “identity is that of an Indian”. He had 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 then issued him a notice, seeking an explanation to whether he had once declared himself a British citizen.
‘Congress chief Indian by birth’
- Trashing allegations of dual citizenship of party president Rahul Gandhi, the Congress on Tuesday said Rahul was an Indian by birth and anyone who suspected this fact needed to ‘see a doctor’
- AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad said: “It is stupid to ask any member of the Nehru-Gandhi family about their citizenship. What can be more stupid? This is the height of stupidity.”
- Earlier today, Congress media head Randeep Surjewala termed BJP leader Subramanian Swamy’s petition to the Home Ministry ‘malicious’ and said ‘such tactics to divert attention from poll issues would not succeed’.
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2PFdTDp
via Today’s News Headlines
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