A Delhi court on Thursday dismissed a plea that was filed before it seeking action against senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi over an alleged forgery linked to her name being included in the electoral roll.
The petitioner alleged that Sonia Gandhi’s name was included in the electoral rolls three years before she became an Indian citizen.
The plea was junked by additional chief judicial magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasia.
A detailed order regarding the matter is awaited.
The judge had on September 10 reserved the order after putting specific queries to the counsel for complainant Vikas Tripathi.
What is the complaint against Sonia Gandhi?
On September 10, senior counsel Pavan Narang appearing for complainant Vikas Tripathi said that Sonia Gandhi was not an Indian citizen in January 1980. Despite this, he alleged, the senior Congress leader’s name was included as a voter of New Delhi constituency in the electoral rolls.
“How can her name be included as a voter if she was not an Indian citizen? What were those documents on which her name was included in the voter lists of the New Delhi constituency? Her name was deleted, which shows that there was something wrong. Her name was again on the voter lists in 1983 before acquiring Indian citizenship,” the complainant argued.
The plea filed before the Rouse Avenue Court sought investigation into the circumstances of inclusion of Sonia Gandhi in electoral rolls before acquisition of Indian citizenship in April 1983.
“First, you have to satisfy the threshold of citizenship, then you will become a resident of an area,” it said.
The complainant further argued that two names were deleted by the Election Commission in 1982 — one of Sanjay Gandhi who died in a plane crash, and the other being Sonia Gandhi.
Narang had argued that the issue at hand is not political but legal, emphasising that the alleged acts constitute a cognisable offence that warrants a police investigation.
The plea states that Sonia Gandhi, an Italian citizen by birth, became an Indian national on April 30, 1983, under Section 5 of the Citizenship Act.
However, her name appeared in the New Delhi parliamentary constituency voters’ list as early as 1981-82, raising questions about the documents submitted to the Election Commission at the time.
Narang submitted that “forged or falsified” documents may have been used to secure her inclusion in the voters’ list before citizenship was granted.
“A public authority has been misled, and a fraud appears to have been committed,” he told the court.
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