New Delhi: No vehicles, three properties co-owned with sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and investments in 25 listed companies are among the Rs 20.40 crore of assets that Congress’s Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi has shared in his election affidavit filed Wednesday.
His assets have doubled in the past 10 years, the affidavit, filed from his current Wayanad parliamentary seat, shows. In 2014, Rahul had declared assets worth Rs 9.40 crore, which rose to Rs 15.88 crore in 2019.
Of the Rs 4.33 crore of stock he owns, Rs 1.5 crore are in four companies — Pidilite Industries Ltd, Bajaj Finance, Nestle India, and Asian Paints. Of these, the highest is in Pidilite, a Mumbai-based adhesive company.
The affidavit also reveals that criminal cases against the Congress MP have tripled over the past five years. Significantly, most of these cases pertain to criminal defamation — including one in which he was convicted in March last year.
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Shares in companies, properties
The Wayanad MP owns shares in Hindustan Unilever (Rs 27 lakh), ICICI Bank (Rs 24 lakh), Infosys (Rs 14 lakh), ITC (Rs 13 lakh), Tata Consultancy Services (Rs 9.8 lakh) and Titan (Rs 32 lakh). Apart from these, he also owns Rs 19.76 lakh in shares in Divi’s Laboratories Limited — a company that the Election Commission of India’s data showed donated Rs 30 crore in electoral bonds to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rs 5 crore to the Congress.
The affidavit also shows that Rahul has Rs 3.8 crore in mutual funds and Rs 15.2 lakh in sovereign gold bonds.
In fixed assets, he owns a commercial property in Gurugram and co-owns three agricultural properties — including a farmhouse — with his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. His share in the three agricultural properties amounts to Rs 2.1 crore, the affidavit shows.
Criminal cases tripled from 2019
Criminal cases against the Wayanad MP have tripled from six in the last general election in 2019 to 18 in 2024. This includes the defamation case that led to his disqualification from Lok Sabha last year.
Until 2014, Rahul did not face a single criminal case.
Fifteen of these 18 cases pertain to criminal defamation. Of these, 10 are for comments made against the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and leaders of these outfits, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Three cases pertain to the leader’s comments on the “Modi clan”, “Modi Samaj” and “all persons with Modi surname”, the affidavit shows. One is in connection with his comments on the Hindutva icon V.D. Savarkar and another to his allegations of a scam at the Ahmedabad District Co-operative Bank.
FIRs have been registered in two of the 18 cases against him — a copyright case for a song he and the Congress used during last year’s Bharat Jodo Yatra and another criminal case for allegedly disclosing the identity of the parents of a minor rape survivor on social media in August 2021.
The last case pertains to a minor Dalit girl’s alleged rape and murder in Delhi’s Old Nangal in August 2021.
In his affidavit, Rahul concedes that he did not know the details of the second FIR since it was submitted to the Delhi High Court in a sealed cover.
“I am also not aware of whether I am arraigned as an accused in this FIR. I am, however, disclosing its existence out of abundant caution,” Rahul says in the affidavit.
The last case against him pertains to the alleged criminal misappropriation of funds at Congress mouthpiece, The National Herald.
This case, filed on the back of a private complaint by former Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, alleges a “conspiracy to criminally misappropriate and cheat the shareholders of M/s The Associated Journals Ltd. by M/s Young Indian and its Directors” in 2010.
The Associated Journals are the publishers of the National Herald. Last year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), one of the agencies investigating the case, attached properties of Associated Journals Limited and Young Indian, another Congress-linked entity.
Rahul, along with Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, are directors of Young Indian. In his affidavit, the Wayanad MP has declared 1,900 shares worth Rs 1.9 lakh in the company.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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