MHA sends notice to Rahul Gandhi on citizenship

New Delhi: Days before the high-profile contest in Amethi between Rahul Gandhi and Smriti Irani, the Union home ministry on Monday served a notice on the Congress president seeking a clarification on his citizenship status.

The home ministry notice to Mr Gandhi sought a reply within 15 days on his “factual position” on his citizenship status following a representation from BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy.

Mr Swamy’s letter mentioned that in a British company’s annual returns filed on October 10, 2005, and October 31, 2006, Mr Gandhi’s date of birth has been given as June 19, 1970, and he had declared his nationality as British, the ministry said.

It said the letter mentioned that a company named Backops Limited was registered in the United Kingdom in 2003 with Mr Gandhi as one of its directors.

The Congress brandished documents of the said company which list Mr Gandhi’s citizenship as Indian. Party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said that the notice showed the desperation of the Modi government.

In 2015, the SC had dismissed a PIL seeking a CBI investigation into the citizenship of Mr Gandhi while noting that PIL pleas 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”.

Gandhi 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 him a notice, seeking an explanation to whether he had once declared himself a British citizen on the legal papers of a company in the United Kingdom. The BJP described Mr Gandhi as a “man of mysteries”.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asked “which is the real one — Rahul Gandhi London wale or Lutyens wale.”

Patra said the entire Rahul Gandhi's citizenship saga is a story of three Cs — citizenship, confusion and clarification.