3 min readNew DelhiApr 19, 2026 05:30 AM IST
A day after it allowed a petition seeking a police probe into allegations that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also holds British citizenship, the Allahabad High Court modified its order on Saturday, saying that “parties need to be given an opportunity to address the Court on this aspect of the matter”. The order was dictated in court.
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi issued notice to Rahul and listed the matter for April 20. In a petition filed by a Karnataka-based BJP member Vignesh Shishir, the High Court had set aside an order of a Lucknow court in January, which declined to entertain his plea.
However, as per the order uploaded on the High Court website on Saturday, the Court said “before the judgment could be typed and signed, came across a judgment” that states that a person against whom a criminal investigation is sought is entitled to be heard before a decision is taken.
The Court said that this question was put to the petitioner’s lawyers during the hearing, who had told the judge that notice to Rahul was not required.
The petitioner had alleged that Gandhi holds a dual citizenship and has allegedly “forged and manipulated multiple passports, concealed by the Indian government”. The petitioner had attached a British government reply under the Data Protection Act 2018, refusing to provide unauthorised public information on citizenship. The petitioner alleged that this refusal to respond to a query “is nothing less than outright admission of the Home Office, Govt. of U.K. that Rahul Gandhi is a citizen of Britain because rules, regulations and acts enacted by U.K. Govt. will be only applicable to the citizen of U.K. and Britain, not to any Indian Citizen at all”.
The Lucknow Court had said that the civil court has no jurisdiction to adjudicate the question of citizenship. In July, 2025, a different bench of the Allahabad HC had dismissed a similar plea by the petitioner with liberty to approach the competent authority under the Citizenship Act 1955. In 2019, a bench headed by then CJI Ranjan Gogoi had dismissed a petition seeking directions to the Centre and Election Commission to bar Gandhi from contesting the Lok Sabha elections till allegations over his citizenship were resolved.
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