Politician, INC President and Member of Parliament
- NAME: Rahul Gandhi
- DATE OF BIRTH: 19 June 1970
- PLACE OF BIRTH: New Delhi
- PARENTS: Late Rajiv Gandhi, & Sonia Gandhi
- SIBLING: Priyanka Gandhi
- EDUCATION:
School
- St.Columba’s School,Delhi,India
- The Doon School ,The Mall Dehradun,Uttarakhand, India
College–
- St. Stephen’s college, Delhi, India
- Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
- Rollins College, Cambridge, England
- Trinity College,Cambridge,England
- OCCUPATION: Politician
- POLITICAL PARTIES: Indian National Congress
- POSITIONS HELD:
I) in 2004, he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
II) On 24 September 2007, he was appointed General Secretary of All India Congress Committee.
III) He was also given charge of National Student Union of India and Indian Youth Congress.
IV) In the 2009 General Elections, he retained his Lok Sabha seat from the Amethi constituency.
V) In January 2013, he was elevated to the position of the vice-president of Indian National Congress.
VI) He retained his Lok Sabha seat from the Amethi constituency in the 2014 General Elections.
VII) On 11 December 2017, he was elected President of the Indian National Congress.
VIII) In the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, he registered a massive win from the Waynaad Constituency; however, he lost the Amethi seat to BJP’s Smriti Irani
IX) On 3 July 2019, he quit as Congress chief. Mr. Gandhi made the resignation letter public, in which he held himself accountable for the 2019 Lok Sabha loss.
Rahul Gandhi is the Cuerrent President of India’s oldest political part Indian National Congress , He is son of Late Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. As the first of the two children of Rajiv Gandhi, who later became the Prime Minister of India, and Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who later became President of Indian National Congress, and as the grandson of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Here is a little excerpt of his life’s journey:
- LEGAL BACKGROUND:
Meenakshi Lekhi vs. Rahul Gandhi (Date of Order: 23.04.2019)
Facts- Meenakshi Lekhi, the BJP Member of Parliament from the New Delhi constituency, filed a petition in the Supreme Court alleging that Congress president Rahul Gandhi had committed contempt by attributing his ‘chowkidar chor hai’ remarks on the Rafale controversy to the top court.
ORDER
The Chief Justice and Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna
The court said,” Mr Rahul Gandhi needs to be more careful in future for attributing to the court his remarks.” The court then order to close the criminal contempt case against the Congress leader. The criminal contempt plea was filed against Rahul by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi for wrongly attributing to the top court in his controversial remark in the Rafale deal case against PM Modi. The judgment was reserved by a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph had on May 10.
Rahul had made the controversial remark on April 10 while speaking to media after the court dismissed the Centre’s objections in the Rafale deal case. The Supreme Court had on April 10 admitted certain documents for supporting the review petitions against the December 14 last year verdict in the Rafale deal case. The Modi government had objected to this. Later, BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi filed the contempt plea against Rahul for the making remarks against the Prime Minister. The Supreme Court had observed that the remarks made by Rahul Gandhi were incorrectly attributed to it.
Rahul Gandhi vs. Rajesh Mahadev Kunte and Anr. (01.09.2016 – SC Order)
Supreme Court: The Bench of Dipak Misra and R.F. Nariman, JJ allowed petitioner Rahul Gandhi to withdraw his Special Leave to Appeal seeking the quashment of the defamation proceedings against him for the statements made by him against the RSS. Kapil Sibal, appearing on behalf of the petitioner, submitted that the petitioner shall go by whatever has been stated in the writ petition preferred before the High Court of Bombay.
The petitioner had, in his statement, accused RSS for the Killing of Mahatma Gandhi which formed the basis for the defamation suit against him before the High Court of Bombay.
Rahul Gandhi had also preferred Writ Petition No. 64 of 2015 invoking the jurisdiction of this Court under Article 32 of the Constitution of India challenging the constitutional validity of Sections 499 and 500 of the Penal Code which was heard along with batch of matters and has been decided vide judgment in Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India, Ministry of Law, (2016) 7 SCC 221 where the Criminal defamation law was held to be constitutionally valid.
The division bench had also held that in that matter that criminal defamation which is in existence in the form of Sections 499 and 500 IPC, is not a restriction on right to freedom of speech and expression that can be characterized as disproportionate. Right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame the other as protection of reputation is a fundamental right as well as a human right. [Rahul Gandhi v. Rajesh Mahadev Kunte, 2016 SCC OnLine SC 892, decided on 01.09.2016]
Manohar Lal Sharma Advocate vs. Rahul Gandhi and Ors (30.11.2015 – SC Order):
Facts-A local lawyer today filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court seeking to know the whereabouts of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who has taken a sabbatical.
Petitioner Ashok Pande said he deemed it necessary for the safety of Gandhi, Congress Vice-President and an MP, and because the reputation of Government of India was involved.
Pande contended that since Gandhi enjoyed security cover of the elite Special Protection Group (SPG), he could not disappear without proper information.
The Supreme Court on warned litigants against raising frivolous issues through public interest litigations, as it dismissed a PIL seeking a CBI probe into Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s alleged foreign citizenship.
If litigants continued to do so, the court said it would be forced to lay down rules restricting the right of citizens to invoke PILs only in special cases, such as those involving the plight of the mentally ill.
By Md. Aftab