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Citizen Sonia Gandhi: Case in India’s Supreme Court

April 16th, 2007
By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist

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sonia_gandhi_2.jpg
(Photo courtesy the Outlook magazine)

The detractors of Sonia Gandhi, said to be ‘the real power behind India’s political throne’, have reasons to smile.

The country’s Supreme Court has reopened the old debate by asking the government for its opinion on whether a ‘registered’ citizen of foreign origin could hold constitutional posts like those of the President and the Prime Minister, says a news report.

In November last year, the Delhi High Court had said the Indian constitution does not differentiate between ‘natural’ and ‘registered’ citizens. Thereby implying that Indian citizens of foreign-origin too are legally eligible to hold constitutional posts.

It was in 1983 that Ms Sonia Gandhi acquired Indian citizenship.

Ms Gandhi’s detractors were lying low so long she kept away from politics following the violent assassination of, first, her famous mother-in-law (former Prime Minister Ms Indira Gandhi) and later her husband, Rajiv Gandhi. Her husband’s grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first Prime Minister of free India.

In view of the dwindling fortunes of the 113-year-old Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi was persuaded by the party men to jump into the political fray, and in 1996 she became a primary member of the party.

In May 2005 Ms Sonia Gandhi was elected President of the Congress Party, thus becoming the fifth member of the famous Nehru-Gandhi family and the eighth foreign-born person to become Congress President, and the third foreign-born woman, following Annie Besant and Nellie Sengupta.

Ms Sonia Gandhi, named the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in 2004, was elected to the Lok Sabha (Indian Parliament’s lower house) with an impressive margin of over 400,000 votes.

Today Ms Gandhi is the Chairperson of the ruling coalition United Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha, and the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party. She has survived the rough and tumble of the Indian politics and is a popular political figure now.

Born Sonia Antonia Maino, in Lusiana, a little village 50 km from Vicenza, Italy, Ms Gandhi spent her adolescence in Orbassano, a town near Turin, and was raised in a Roman Catholic family and attending a Catholic school.

She has a son, Rahul, and daughter, Priyanka, who have also begun to dabble in politics in a big way. They face no problems with regard to the citizenship issue as they were born in India.



This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 4:07 am and is filed under Italy, India, Europe. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
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