Indian parliament asks Rahul Gandhi to explain British citizenship

The Indian Parliament's ethics committee has asked the country's main opposition Congress party's second-in-command Rahul Gandhi to explain his British citizenship, sources said Monday.

In fact, the Nehru-Gandhu scion has been asked to explain whether he once declared himself a British citizen on the legal papers of a company in Britain, following a complaint by a lawmaker of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to the speaker of the Lower House of Parliament.

The Congress had got embroiled in the British citizenship row involving Gandhi in November when Subramanian Swamy, a senior BJP leader, said that he had accessed documents to show that the Congress vice president claimed British nationality to set up a company in Britain.

The Congress has accused the parliament speaker of bypassing "the process of natural justice" by not asking Gandhi for his version first and also released another document of the same company, in which he had declared himself Indian.

Gandhi, 45, has rejected the allegations of impropriety and dared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send him to jail if he was proven guilty. He could be expelled from the Parliament as the ethics panel had the power to do so in case if he is found guilty. Endit