Modi Govt withdraws SPG cover of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka, to be provided with Z+ cover

The government has decided to take away the elite SPG protection from Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and daughter Priyanka, officials said on Friday.

The Gandhi family will now get 'Z+' security by the CRPF on an all-India basis, they said.

The Union government took the decision to withdraw the Gandhi family's Special Protection Group (SPG) cover after a security assessment, a senior official said.

The Nehru-Gandhi family got the SPG cover in view of high threat perception to their lives after former prime minister and Sonia Gandhi's husband Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the LTTE while he was on an election campaign trail in 1991.

Rajiv Gandhi, who was out of power after the Congress party failed to get a majority in the 1989 Lok Sabha general elections, had a bare minimum security at that time.

Rajiv’s mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards in 1984 when she was still the prime minister.

The government had recently withdrawn the SPG cover of former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the only politician to have the SPG security cover.

Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel condemned the government’s decision saying it was vendetta politics and the Modi government was putting the lives of the family of two former prime ministers in danger.