'Price for speaking truth': Rahul Gandhi vacates bungalow

New Delhi, April 22

Sticking to the deadline set by the Lok Sabha secretariat, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday vacated his official bungalow in Delhi and shifted to his mother Sonia Gandhi’s residence.

Talking to mediapersons who had assembled at the 12, Tughlaq Lane bungalow, Rahul said he was “ready to pay any price for speaking the truth”. “The people of India gave this house to me for 19 years and I want to thank them. This is the price for speaking the truth and I am ready to pay that price,” he said. The former Congress president said he would continue to demand setting up of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe the Adani Group’s affairs and its link with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rahul, who had been moving his belongings from the house since last week, finally vacated it this evening and handed over the key to the CPWD officials who had come to the bungalow to collect it. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited the house today before it was vacated. A disqualified MP is not entitled to a government accommodation and gets a one-month period to vacate his official residence. However, Congress leaders have accused the Centre of political vendetta. The promptitude with which various actions were initiated against the opposition leader following his conviction by a Surat court in a defamation case over Modi surname remarks made in 2019 in Karnataka also raised eyebrows.

On March 23, Rahul was convicted and given a two-year sentence by the trial court in Surat in connection with the case filed against him by a Gujarat BJP leader. The following day, he was disqualified from Parliament. The very next day (March 25), the Lok Sabha housing committee headed by BJP MP CR Patil issued a letter asking Rahul to vacate the bungalow by April 22.

Rahul replied to the letter saying “it was to the mandate of the people to which he owed the happy memories of time spent in the residence and he would abide by the details contained in the letter”. Rahul has been swamped with offers for homes by party leaders but for the time being, he has moved in with his mother Sonia to her 10 Janpath residence.