Rahul Gandhi’s citizenship is much ado about nothing.

mangaloretoday network

New Delhi, May 02: Amidst the heat and dust of the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign, the Home Ministry sent a notice to Rahul Gandhi to clarify whether he is an Indian citizen or British.

As per a complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanya Swamy, Rahul has declared his nationality as British in papers linked to a company, Backops Ltd, in which he (Rahul) was a director.

The Congress has accused the BJP of using the issue to divert its (Congress’) focus from election campaign. The government has  said the notice was a normal process and not a big development.

The timing of the notice, however, does lead to raising of a few quizzical eyebrows as the original complaint was made in 2017. Also, a case on the same issue has been dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2015.

Apparently, a parliamentary ethics committee too has gone into the matter and has found nothing amiss.

In any event, it looks like flogging a dead horse.

The case will be part of election bluster for a few days and then eventually meet an unceremonious death.

It is all part of a bizarre rigmarole that has become part of Indian politics.

Issues like Narendra Modi’s college degree, Smriti Irani’s educational qualification, Sonia Gandhi’s Cambridge stint, Robert Vadra’s properties and riches are talked of in impassioned tones. They forever stuff for rumour mills. But when  push comes to shove the antagonists retreat and nothing concrete ever comes out. And that is mostly because the parties concerned don’t pursue the matter all that vigorously.

There is a general feeling among sceptical, conspiracy-theory-loving folks in the media that both the BJP and the Congress are in some kind of complicit understanding that on these matters the two parties would keep hitting each other without exactly hurting each other.

If you are a supporter of the BJP, you believe the charges against Rahul, Sonia and Vadhra. On the other hand, Congress backers tend to attach credence to the allegations against Modi and Smriti Irani. The rumour mill is kept rolling by all these folks together. They become gist for plenty of WhatsApp forwards. Urban legends are built around these stories. But nothing more of actual significance happens. 

“These things look a tad filmi,” say Santosh Kumar, a journalist in New Delhi working for a Tamil Nadu news outlet. “The allegations on these matters have been in the public domain for over a decade or so. But the parties that make the charges don’t seem to take the matter for final resolution. It’s politics, stupid,” he says.