A Delhi court on Thursday dismissed a plea which had alleged that Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s name appeared in the electoral rolls three years before she became an Indian citizen.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia junked the petition that sought action against Gandhi, ruling out further proceedings on the matter.
“We have dismissed it,” the court said, as per Bar and Bench. A detailed order regarding the same is awaited.
The complaint was filed by Vikas Tripathi and argued by senior advocate Pavan Narang.
Sonia Gandhi Named Voter 3 Years Before Citizenship, Deleted, And Re-Listed, Plea Alleged
Narang had contended that Sonia Gandhi’s name was added to the voter rolls of the New Delhi constituency in January 1980, despite her not having Indian citizenship then. “The only issue involved here is that in January 1980 Sonia Gandhi’s name was added as a voter of the New Delhi constituency when she was not an Indian citizen,” Narang told the court earlier, as per news agency PTI.
He had argued that citizenship was a prerequisite to residency and claimed that documents such as ration cards or passports would have been used as residence proof at the time.
The plea further pointed out that Sonia Gandhi’s name was deleted from the rolls in 1982 alongside Sanjay Gandhi’s, who had died in a plane crash. Narang argued that this deletion suggested the Election Commission had found “something wrong”. He submitted that Gandhi’s name was re-entered in 1983, after she had acquired Indian citizenship.
The petition, moved under Section 175(4) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, sought a police probe into allegations of forgery and deception of public authority. “My limited request is to either direct the police to register an FIR under the appropriate sections. Whether they are made or not is the domain of the police,” Narang had told the court, as per PTI.
