HC notice to Centre on Rahul citizenship plea
The matter arose from a plea seeking directions to the Union home ministry to take a call on his representation for canceling Gandhi’s citizenship.
The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Centre to apprise the court of the steps the government has taken in response to a letter sent by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy to the Union home ministry over the alleged dual citizenship of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi.
In August 2019, Swamy wrote a letter to the ministry alleging Gandhi had “voluntarily disclosed” to the British government that he was a citizen of British nationality, amounting to holding a British passport. The BJP leader alleged that Gandhi would thus lose/cease to be an Indian as this was in violation of Article 9 of the Constitution, read with the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955.
A bench of chief justice DK Upadhayay and justice Tushar Rao Gedela on Wednesday asked additional solicitor general (ASG) Chetan Sharma to seek instructions after Swamy submitted that he had sent many representations asking for an update about the status of his August 2019 complaint. Centre had neither taken any action nor intimated to him about the status of his complaint.
“The prayer is not to make a decision on the substantive issue of the pending matter. He (Swamy) is only seeking directions on his representation. Seek instructions regarding the stage of the proceeding, regarding the letter (August 2019 letter),” the bench told ASG and fixed March 26 as the next date of hearing.
The matter arose from a plea filed by Swamy seeking directions to the Union home ministry to take a call on his representation for canceling Gandhi’s citizenship. The plea had added that though the government after his letter had issued a show cause notice to Gandhi, seeking explanation regarding his British citizenship, Gandhi had not replied to the same and even the government had not taken any action after that.
Previously, the court had expressed reservations in hearing Swamy’s plea saying that there could not be parallel proceedings for the same cause of action, taking note of the pendency of a plea seeking similar relief before the Allahabad high court. The plea pending before the Allahabad high court was filed by Vignesh Shishir, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member from Karnataka, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into Gandhi’s citizenship.
