Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 11: A Delhi court on Thursday dismissed a plea seeking action against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi for alleged forgery related to the inclusion of her name in the electoral rolls, three years before she became an Indian citizen.
The plea had accused the former Congress president and the Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson of forging documents to get herself enrolled in the voters’ list before obtaining Indian citizenship.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Vaibhav Chaurasiya had reserved the order in the case on Wednesday, after hearing arguments and putting forward some queries for the complainant’s counsel. A detailed order is awaited.
“The documents clearly indicate that Sonia Gandhi took citizenship of this country… on April 30, 1983. Her name got included in the electoral roll as a voter in the New Delhi constituency in 1980…, which was then deleted in 1982. It re-entered in 1983 when the qualification date was January 1, 1983,” said senior advocate Pavan Narang, who represented the petitioner Vikas Tripathi, who is also the Rouse Avenue Courts Bar Association Vice-President.
On Wednesday, Mr Narang told the court that in January 1980 Ms Gandhi’s name was added as a voter of New Delhi constituency when she was not an Indian citizen. “First, you have to satisfy the threshold of citizenship, then you will become a resident of an area,” he said.
Mr Narang, who was accompanied by advocate Himanshu Sethi, said in 1980, the proof of residence was probably a ration card or a passport. “If she was a citizen, then why was her name deleted in 1982? Two names were deleted then by the election commission, one was of Sanjay Gandhi after he died in a plane crash, and the other was of Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
Mr Narang said the election commission must have found something wrong prompting deletion of her name from the electoral rolls. On September 4, Mr Narang said Ms Gandhi’s name was included in the electoral roll as a voter of the New Delhi constituency in 1980, which was deleted in 1982 and again re-entered in 1983 after she acquired the Indian citizenship.
The plea was filed under Section 175 (4) (power of magistrate to order investigation) of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, seeking directions to the police for investigation into the allegation that Gandhi became an Indian citizen in 1983, but her name was in the 1980 electoral roll.
He claimed “some forgery” and public authority being “cheated.” “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,” he added.
“I think only some documents existed back then… maybe a passport or a ration card. PAN and Aadhaar were not there… What were the documents that were available to her in 1980, which showed that she was a citizen of India?” he had argued. “To vote, one has to cross the threshold of being an Indian citizen. Being a resident of the New Delhi Parliamentary constituency is the second threshold,” Narang had said.
During the arguments, Narang also cited the 1985 Allahabad High Court ruling in Rakesh Singh vs Sonia Gandhi, which had acknowledged that the Congress leader had become an Indian citizen on April 30, 1983.