Rahul Gandhi on Monday gave his first ever television interview since he became a politician a decade ago. Here are some interesting facts about India's most famous political scion.
- Rahul, 42, is the elder of the Gandhi siblings - sister Priyanka Vadra is two years his junior. They are very close to each other, but Priyanka is more charismatic and bears a striking resemblance to their grandmother and India's former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
- Rahul was 14 when his grandmother was assassinated by her bodyguards. Years later, he recalled at a rally how the two assassins were his friends who taught him to play badminton. "... My friends killed my grandmother," he said.
- While he fiercely guards his privacy, Rahul went on record to clear misinformation about his girlfriend, Veronique Cartelli, who studied in the same university as him in England in the 1990s and whom he considered his best friend. "My girlfriend's name is Veronique not Juanita. She is Spanish and not Venezuelan or Colombian. She is an architect not a waitress, though I wouldn't have had a problem with that." The current status of their relationship is unclear.
- In the bioprofile of the official parliamentary website, Rahul declared his profession as "farmer" in 2004, his first term in parliament. However, in his second stint in 2009, the professional description was changed to "strategy consultant". His educational status - MPhil in Development Economics - remains unchanged.
- His parliamentary track record remains poor. In his first term, Rahul had an average of 63% attendance, participated in five debates and asked three questions in Parliament. In his second stint, his attendance was 43%, participated in one debate and posed no questions until Dec 2013, according to PRSindia, a website on Legislative research.
