New Delhi, September 2: The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has thrown out a petition that sought to challenge Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Indian citizenship and his position as a Member of Parliament, ruling that the petitioners failed to back their allegations with sufficient evidence.
The Allegation
The plea, filed by Ashok Pandey and Rajneesh Kumar Singh, sought a writ of quo warranto against Gandhi, arguing he was not eligible to hold his Lok Sabha seat from Raebareli because he was allegedly a citizen of the United Kingdom rather than of India. The petitioners' case rested on the claim that Gandhi had incorporated a company in Britain in 2003 and had, in that process, identified himself as a British national.
Court's Observations
A division bench of Justices Shekhar B. Saraf and Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary, in an order passed on August 31 that was made public on September 2, found that the petitioners could not produce a single document to prove the company had been set up in the manner alleged, or that Gandhi had ever formally declared himself a British citizen. The only material placed before the court was a purported letter from the University of Cambridge referring to the studies of a person named "Raul Vinci," which the bench said did not establish any of the claims made in the petition.
Faced with the court's questions over the lack of evidence, the petitioner appearing in person sought permission to withdraw the plea, which the bench granted, dismissing the case as withdrawn without imposing costs.
The bench also noted that Pandey and Singh had raised substantially similar allegations in earlier petitions filed in 2015 and 2019, both of which had already been disposed of by coordinate benches of the same court. In those earlier rulings, the court had held that grievances over an individual's citizenship fall under the jurisdiction of the Central Government, to be examined under Section 9(2) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 — not the High Court.
Matter Still Pending With the Centre
The court's order noted that a representation on the citizenship question, first submitted to the Central Government in 2015 and followed up again in 2019, remains before the competent authority. A separate petition raising similar allegations against Gandhi is still pending before another bench of the Allahabad High Court.
