M A I N   N E W S

Assets
Sonia left far behind
Shahira Naim/Tribune News Service

Rae Bareli, April 6
Sonia Gandhi does not possess a car or a house in the country and has only Rs 75,000 in the bank.

According to the affidavit furnished by her while filing her nomination for Lok Sabha here, she does mention an ancestral home in Italy worth Rs 18.05 lakh as per wealth tax returns dated March 31, 2008.

The Congress president’s total assets are worth around Rs 1.38 crore. It is almost Rs 1 crore less than her son Rahul Gandhi as reported by him in his affidavit submitted on Saturday while filing his nomination from Amethi in Sultanpur.

Sonia owns two plots of agricultural land totaling up to about 15 bighas and valued at Rs 2.19 lakh. Three bighas are in Dera Mandi village and 12 bighas in Sultanpur village.

In addition to mutual funds worth about Rs 20 lakh and Rs 12 lakh in Reserve Bank of India bonds, Sonia Gandhi has Rs 1.99 lakh worth of NSS in the post office and Rs 24.88 lakh in Public Provident Fund (PPF).

Despite appearing most plainly dressed, Sonia possesses jewellery weighing about 2.5 kg gold valued at Rs 11 lakh and 88 kg of silver worth about Rs 18 lakh.

She has paid income tax of Rs 5.58 lakh for the assessment year 2008-09 and wealth tax worth Rs 32,512. She possesses a three-year diploma in foreign languages (English and French) that she completed in 1964 from Istituto Santa Teresa Via Santa Teresa in Turin in Italy. She also holds a Certificate in English Language from Lennox Cook School, Cambridge.

Soon after arriving in Rae Bareli, she visited the Congress office along with son Rahul, family friend Capt Satish Sharma and Congress workers where she performed a puja before heading to the Collectorate to file her nomination.

A huge crowd had lined the entire route in the intense heat raining rose petals on her cavalcade. Due to security reasons and also the fear of the model code of conduct, she did not address the people anywhere and left straight for Takia, another religious place in Rae Bareli associated with religious scholar late Ali Miyan of the Nadwa University in Lucknow.