Court grants more time to Sonia Gandhi to file response on plea over inclusion of her name in electoral roll

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday granted time till February 7 to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to file her reply on a plea challenging a magistrate's order refusing to probe the allegation that she was included in the electoral rolls three years before acquiring Indian citizenship in 1983. On December 9, Judge Gogne had issued notice to Gandhi and the Delhi Police seeking their response on the plea.

When the matter was taken up on Tuesday, the counsel for Gandhi sought more time to file the response following which the court granted time till February 7, the next date of hearing.

The September 11 magisterial order had dismissed the complaint filed by advocate Vikas Tripathi, vice president of the Central Delhi Court Bar Association of the Rouse Avenue courts.

The court had said the complaint was "fashioned with the object of clothing the court with jurisdiction through allegations which are legally untenable, deficient in substance, and beyond the scope of this forum's authority".

Tripathi's counsel, senior advocate Pavan Narang, had alleged before the magisterial court that in January 1980, Gandhi's name was added as a voter of the New Delhi constituency when she was not an Indian citizen.

He had claimed "some forgery" and a public authority being "cheated".

The magistrate, however, had dismissed the plea seeking a probe by holding that the complainant sought to set the criminal law in motion by persuading the court to assume jurisdiction, which did not vest in it legally.

He had observed that "mere bald assertions, unaccompanied by the essential particulars required to attract the statutory elements of cheating or forgery", cannot substitute a legally sustainable accusation.

The plea, the magistrate had said, was merely relying upon an extract of the electoral roll, which was "a photocopy of a photocopy of an alleged extract of an uncertified electoral roll" of 1980.

Deprecating the complaint, the magistrate had said, "Such a course, in substance, amounts to a misuse of the process of law by projecting a civil or ordinary dispute in the garb of criminality, solely to create a jurisdiction where none exists."