Will Rahul Gandhi Get His Government House Back? Rules Say…

New Delhi:

Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, reinstated in parliament, will need to re-apply to the parliamentary housing committee to get his Tughlaq Lane home back. The house is yet to be allotted to anyone. Sources said Mr Gandhi would be re-allotted the house again once he applies.

Mr Gandhi had vacated the house days after he was stripped of his Lok Sabha membership on March 24 after he got a two-year jail term in the Modi surname case. A punishment of two years and above automatically disqualifies a lawmaker.

He has been living at his mother Sonia Gandhi’s 10 Janpath Road residence since.

Earlier today, Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary raised the issue of Mr Gandhi’s house before the Lok Sabha housing committee. He wanted to apply on behalf of Mr Gandhi but he was told that under the rules, only Mr Gandhi can apply for it.

The Congress had accused the Centre of political vendetta after the Lok Sabha Housing Committee asked Mr Gandhi to move out of the government accommodation. It started with an impromptu “Mera ghar aapka ghar (my home is your home)” campaign across the country and Mr Gandhi was swamped with offers to stay with various Congress leaders and supporters.

Senior Uttar Pradesh Congress leader Ajay Rai was the first to symbolically dedicate his home to Mr Gandhi.

“The dictators of the country want to snatch the residence of our leader Rahul Gandhi. But they do not know that the houses of crores of party workers across the country belong to Rahul Gandhi,” Mr Rai said.

Mr Gandhi was reinstated to the Lok Sabha today after the Supreme Court put his conviction on hold on Friday. “No reason has been given by the trial judge for imposing maximum sentence, the order of conviction needs to be stayed pending final adjudication,” the judges said.

A Gujarat court had handed Mr Gandhi a two-year jail term over his comments on PM Modi’s surname. At a rally in Karnataka’s Kolar ahead of the 2019 general election, in a dig at PM Modi, Mr Gandhi had said, “How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname?”

But he was accused of insulting a backward community and a police case was filed against him.