The Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench has dismissed as withdrawn a writ petition challenging Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship after finding that the petitioners had produced no concrete document to support their claim that he was a British citizen.
A division bench of Justices Shekhar B Saraf and Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary passed the order on August 31. The order became available on Wednesday, bringing an end to the petition filed by Lucknow-based lawyer Ashok Pandey and Rajneesh Kumar Singh.
The petition sought a writ of quo warranto questioning Gandhi’s right to continue as the Lok Sabha member from Rae Bareli. The petitioners alleged that he was not a citizen of India and was instead a British national, an assertion the court said had not been supported by documentary evidence.
During the hearing, Singh, who appeared in person, argued that Gandhi had incorporated Backops Limited in Britain in 2003 and had identified himself as a director, major shareholder and British national. The bench asked him to produce records relating to the company’s incorporation, documents from Britain’s Registrar of Companies or any declaration in which Gandhi had described himself as a British citizen.
The court recorded that no such material was placed before it. It said the petitioner could not show a single document establishing that Gandhi had declared himself to be a British citizen.
The only document relied upon by Singh was an alleged letter of confirmation from the University of Cambridge concerning the studies of a person named “Raul Vinci”. The bench held that the document did not prove any of the allegations raised in the petition.
After the court questioned the evidentiary basis of the case, Singh sought permission to withdraw the petition. The bench allowed the request and dismissed the writ petition as withdrawn, without imposing costs.
The judges also noted that the petitioners had raised substantially similar issues before the High Court in earlier proceedings. A coordinate bench had dismissed a petition in 2015 while holding that a grievance concerning alleged loss of citizenship had to be raised before the Union government under Section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The petitioners returned to court in 2019, when liberty was again granted to approach the Centre with a fresh representation. The latest order recorded that a representation dated May 3, 2019, had been acknowledged by the Union government on June 29 that year and that the citizenship issue remained pending before the competent authority.
The bench said it had initially been sceptical about entertaining the fresh petition because substantially identical prayers had already been made in several earlier writ petitions and the question of Gandhi’s citizenship was still before the Union government. It nevertheless heard Singh after he pressed the court to consider his submissions.
The order also recorded that, while the 2019 representation remained undecided, the petitioners had approached authorities and raised the issue before the returning officer during the 2024 general election. They then asked the High Court to determine the citizenship question, arguing that no decision had been taken by the competent authority. The bench declined to proceed on that basis after examining the material produced and finding that the central allegation was unsupported by the records placed before it.
The proceeding was separate from another case before the Allahabad High Court involving similar allegations against Gandhi. That matter arose from a petition filed by Karnataka-based BJP worker S Vignesh Shishir and has followed a separate procedural course.
Citizenship is material to membership of Parliament because the Constitution requires a person contesting for a seat in either House to be a citizen of India. The petition before Justices Saraf and Chaudhary, however, did not result in any adjudication that Gandhi lacked citizenship; it ended with withdrawal after the court found the supporting material inadequate.
