A Delhi sessions court on Monday reopened the question of an FIR against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi over allegations that her name appeared in the electoral rolls in 1980, three years before she acquired Indian citizenship, holding that a magistrate had rejected the complaint without properly examining whether it disclosed a cognisable offence.Setting aside the September 2025 order, Special Judge Vishal Gogne termed it “perverse and improper” and found that it was non-speaking on a key question: whether the allegations against Sonia warranted a criminal investigation.The judge sent the complaint back for a fresh decision and directed the magistrate to hear complainant Vikas Tripathi and the Delhi Police, conduct the required inquiry and pass a reasoned order. The matter will come up on September 29.The sessions court has neither ordered the registration of an FIR nor recorded any finding that Sonia used forged documents.“The sanctity of the electoral roll is an article of faith for every citizen in a parliamentary democracy,” the court observed, adding that even the “mightiest” in the land ultimately stand as voters like ordinary citizens.It said allegations of tampering with electoral rolls, fraudulent inclusion of a non-citizen or false declarations deserved a reasoned examination.The complaint rests on a sequence of events spanning three years. Tripathi claims Sonia’s name was included in the electoral roll of the New Delhi constituency in 1980, although she became an Indian citizen only in April 1983. He alleges that her name was deleted in 1982 before being included again in 1983, and that forged documents were used for the earlier entry.Sonia has rejected the allegations, describing the case as “wholly misconceived, frivolous, politically motivated” and an abuse of the process of law.In her reply, she argued that serious allegations had been made on the basis of speculation, media reports and “imaginary applications”, without producing the documents on which a charge of forgery could be based.She submitted that neither the alleged voter registration applications nor citizenship-related or purported forged documents had been placed before the court.Tripathi had first approached Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Vaibhav Chaurasiya, who dismissed his complaint on September 11, 2025. The magistrate held that bald assertions based on a photocopy of an uncertified electoral roll extract could not sustain allegations of cheating or forgery.Tripathi then moved the sessions court in revision. A notice was issued to Sonia in December last year.Judge Gogne found fault with how the complaint had been dealt with, observing that the magistrate had not adequately addressed the sequence of the alleged 1980 entry, its deletion in 1982 and the subsequent 1983 inclusion.The court also found a “manifest error in law” in the failure to call for a police status report and hear the police before deciding the complaint.Judge Gogne, however, declined to decide whether an FIR should be registered, holding that a revisional court could not assume the magistrate’s role under Section 175(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.