Lucknow: The central government on Monday informed the Allahabad High Court that it has received a representation filed under the Citizenship Act 1955 alleging Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had British citizenship.
However, Deputy Solicitor General of India SB Pandey sought more time to place before the high court bench the status of action on the representation moved by S Vignesh Shishir.
Justices Rajan Roy and Om Prakash Shukla of the Lucknow bench had asked the Centre to apprise the court of the status of the representation after Shishir, a BJP worker hailing from Karnataka, filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) stating that no action has been taken by the Centre in the matter.
In the PIL, the petitioner has claimed that he has done detailed enquiries into the issue of Gandhi being a British citizen and has got several new inputs.
He also claimed to have accessed confidential e-mails from the UK government on the issue.
The PIL further said that in the mails, the UK government has indicated that it has records of Rahul Gandhi’s British nationality but it has refused to disclose details on the ground that this is “personal data” of Gandhi and as per General Data Protection Regulations framed under the UK’s Data Protection Act, 2018, the British government cannot provide this information unless it gets a signed letter of authority from Gandhi.
The petitioner has sought a CBI inquiry into the allegations of Gandhi’s British citizenship.
The petitioner also said that he filed a detailed statutory representation under section 9(2) of the Citizenship Act asking the central government to inquire into the issue but till date, nothing has been done on his demand.
During the hearing, the high court noted that a similar plea had been moved earlier by the petitioner. But the earlier plea was withdrawn by him, with a liberty to approach the competent authority.
Now, the petitioner claimed to have to moved representation with the competent authority in the Union Home Ministry seeking cancellation of Rahul Gandhi’s British citizenship.
At this, the court directed the Assistant Solicitor General of India, S B Pandey, to take instructions on the representation from the home ministry.
