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fullscreen Congress’s Rahul Gandhi gets to share parliament with the son of his grandmother Indira Gandhi’s killer. Photo: Altaf Qadri/AP/TT
As expected, Rahul Gandhi retains his seat in the Indian Parliament.
The 53-year-old has 20 years behind him in parliament, where he is the fourth generation in the family to sit. But for the next five years he is forced to share a room with the son of his grandmother’s murderer.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards. The son of one of them has now been elected as one of the representatives of the state of Punjab.
Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa ran as an independent candidate and is one of the few in Punjab who managed to defeat the opposition alliance India’s candidate in his constituency.
He is not the only newly elected to attract attention as newly elected from Punjab. There, the jailed separatist leader Amritpal Singh was also elected to parliament, also as an independent candidate.
Singh was arrested last year after agitating for months for the creation of an independent Khalistan, the Sikh name for a “pure” Punjab, governed according to Sikh religious laws.