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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi could soon move into a modest three-BHK house in South Delhi’s leafy Nizamuddin East locality. The house belongs to the family of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who spent the last years of her life there.
Gandhi vacated his official bungalow on April 22 after his disqualification from the Lok Sabha, temporarily moving in with his mother, but had been searching for a suitable house. Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders from across the country, including Delhi, offered their homes to their former party chief to stay.
Gandhi had visited Dikshit’s house to pay his condolences when she passed away in July 2019. When told the current occupiers, Dikshit’s family, were shifting to a nearby flat, the idea of living there as a tenant appealed to Gandhi.
The simple 1,500 square feet house, overlooking the verdant Humayun’s Tomb, a 16th-century Mughal era mausoleum, will be in some contrast to the spacious 12, Tughlaq Lane Lutyens Delhi bungalow that was Gandhi's home for 19 years.
The house is a few hundred metres from the Dargah of 13th-century Sufi saint Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. Gandhi offered prayers at the dargah when his Bharat Jodo Yatra entered Delhi in the last week of December.
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Dikshit purchased the Nizamuddin East house in 1991. She was the Delhi chief minister from 1998 to 2013 and briefly the governor of Kerala in 2014, an office she quit after the National Democratic Alliance government assumed power at the Centre. She moved into the Nizamuddin East house after her Kerala gubernatorial stint and lived there until she passed away.
A Surat court on March 23 sentenced Gandhi to two years in jail in a criminal defamation case filed against him by a Gujarat BJP legislator in 2019. Subsequently, Gandhi, an MP from Kerala’s Wayanad, was disqualified from the Lok Sabha. He vacated his MP’s bungalow within a month without seeking an extension. “People of India gave me this house 19 years ago…I want to thank them. There is a price for speaking the truth nowadays…. I will continue to pay the price for speaking the truth…whatever be the price,” Gandhi had said after vacating the house.
Last week, the Gujarat High Court refused to stay the Surat court’s order. The Congress said it would challenge Gandhi's conviction in the Supreme Court.
