Every year on May 21, India remembers former Prime Minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated 30 years ago today during a political campaign.
This year, the Congress party has requested that all of its state units and frontal organisations observe Rajiv Gandhi’s death anniversary as a day of “Seva and Sadbhavna” for those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Workers for the Congress have been tasked with distributing relief materials to the public as well as preparing and distributing basic medicine kits to those in need.
Gandhi was the country’s sixth prime minister and was awarded the Bharat Ratna. Following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, he assumed command of the office in 1984, making him the youngest person to ever hold the position. At the time, he was 40 years old.
Gandhi was born in 1944 in Bombay, India, to the politically powerful Nehru–Gandhi family. Jawaharlal Nehru, his maternal grandfather, was India’s first Prime Minister.
Gandhi completed his education at Dehradun’s Doon School before moving to London to further his education. In 1966, he returned to India, where India Gandhi became the country’s first female prime minister.
Gandhi was also a trained pilot who worked for a time for the state-owned Indian Airlines.
Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia Gandhi, the current Congress party president, in 1968. The Gandhis have two children, Rahul and Priyanka.
Assassination
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur, Chennai, in 1991 during an election campaign by a suicide bomber from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, took over the Congress party after his death and became the party’s president for the first time in 1998.
