Delhi Court Receives Plea For FIR Against Sonia Gandhi On Voter Roll Row

Congress Veteran faces a new legal challenge.

The national capital has been engulfed in a major legal scandal that involved one of the most eminent political leaders in India. A new application has been made before a court in Delhi requesting a First Information Report (FIR) against a congress leader, Sonia Gandhi. The case has been taken to the Rouse Avenue Court, an institution that will deal with cases that involve Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assembly. The complaint casts significant doubts on whether she was included in the electorate registers decades ago legitimately.

The gist of the controversy is that there was an announcement that the name of Sonia Gandhi was written in the Indian voter list much earlier than she became a citizen of the country. A petitioner is a lawyer called Vikas Tripathi who has turned to the court to have a police investigation into this anomaly. He argues that this is not an administrative mistake but a possible fraud and criminal charges should be brought against him. The court has already noted the revision petition and has put the issue on the list of further consideration in the nearest days.

This is a legal action following the rejection of a similar complaint in the same petitioner by a lower magistrate court. The complainant is unhappy with the previous decision, and has appealed the decision to a Special Judge, complaining of the dismissal. This is the reason why the continuation of the petitioner means the legal struggle is likely to gain momentum and keep the courtroom attention on the procedural history of the citizenship and voting rights of the Congress leader. This ruling on the hearing of the revision plea has reintroduced the decades old problem in to the limelight of the public.

The Citizenship Timeline Aberration.

The main position of the petition is based on a certain chronology of events since the beginning of 1980s. As shown in the paperwork submitted by the complainant, Sonia Gandhi became an Indian citizen on April 30, 1983. It is a historical date that is publicly known and referred to in numerous cases of the law over the years. But the petitioner claims that he has documents that prove that her name was already on the electoral roll of the New Delhi constituency even in the year 1980.

According to the petitioner, according to the Indian law, namely, Representation of the People Act, 1950, only an Indian citizen can be registered as a voter. The fact that her name was included in the 1980 voter list is a direct violation of the law in case the citizenship was gained in 1983. The grievance indicates that her name must have been submitted to the election authorities in one way or the other in order to have her name listed three years ago.

This contradiction begs the question of what documents were involved in checking her eligibility at that moment. The petitioner has specifically claimed that there are chances of forged documents being used to gain this early access to the voting list. He states that she was admittedly a foreign nation in 1980 and therefore no legal basis existed as to her being in the roll. This misalignment of timeline is the main fact that is causing the need to investigate the crime.

There were claims of Forgery and Deleted Names.

The second important issue presented by the petitioner is the abrupt removal of the name of Sonia Gandhi in the voterlist in the year 1982. The complaint points out that she disappeared off the list two years down the line and then resurfaced in the roll in 1983 when she became a citizen. According to the petitioner, this order of events entry, deletion, and re-entry is very suspicious and is an indication of knowledge of the illegality.

The petitioner lawyer mentioned in the court that the Election Commission would not have done nothing, and that there must have been something amiss that led to the deletion in 1982. He indicated that in that particular period, two names have been removed off the list one was that of Sanjay Gandhi after his death and the other was that of Sonia Gandhi. According to the plea, the deletion of Sanjay Gandhi was as a result of his demise and that Sonia Gandhi cannot be deleted lawfully except in the event that deletion of the initial entry was proved to be invalid.

This is not only framed as an infringement of election laws in the petition but it can be seen as a form of cheating with a figure of authority. The complainant claims that the sanctity of the electoral process would be undermined by providing false information to get on the voter list. The need of an FIR is founded on the assumption that an investigation by a police is required to reveal the particular documents that were presented in 1980. The petitioner states that the truth regarding the alleged forgery cannot be uncovered without the help of a police investigation.

Court Action and the Petition of Revision.

This case has undergone several phases in the system of the Delhi district court. This was first tried by an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM). The magistrate after hearing the discussion had rejected the plea on the ground that there was no sufficient reason to order a police investigation at this point. The order of the magistrate was a provisional saving to the leader of the Congress, which did not make an end of the legal chase.

The petitioner opposed the refusal of the magistrate thus filed a criminal revision petition before the Special Judge at the Rouse Avenue Court. A revision petition is a law provision whereby a superior court can overrule the accuracy, legality or propriety of a ruling by the lower court. The petitioner cited that the magistrate did not give due credit to the documentary evidence provided on the breach of the Citizenship Act and the election rules.