Rahul Gandhi's 'UK citizenship': Allahabad High Court seeks Centre's response on plea

Lucknow: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has sought information from the Centre about action taken on the representation to the Union Home Ministry regarding citizenship of former Congress president and Leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.

The representation to the Union Home Ministry, which has been made by Vignesh Shishir, a resident of Karnataka, has claimed that Rahul holds citizenship of Britain.

A division bench comprising Justices A R Masoodi and Subhash Vidyarthi passed the order on Monday on a petition filed by Vignesh seeking a CBI probe into the citizenship matter.

The court asked the additional solicitor general to get the required information from the Centre and submit the same to the court on the next date of hearing. The court directed that the matter be listed in the week commencing from December 16 next for further hearing.

In his earlier petition, which was dismissed as withdrawn, Vignesh has contended that Rahul is a British citizen and as such he was ineligible to contest the elections under Article 84 (A) of the Constitution. Vignesh filed a fresh petition in the court seeking to know about the action taken on his representations made to the Centre.

The court had then, however, allowed the petitioner to approach the competent authority under the provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955.

Additional solicitor S B Pandey said that the petitioner told the court that he had submitted two representations to the Union Home Ministry regarding the citizenship of Rahul Gandhi seeking cancellation of his Indian citizenship on the ground that he was a British citizen.