Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi was born in Bombay in 1944 to Feroze Gandhi and Indira Gandhi. He spent part of his childhood at Teen Murti House in New Delhi, where his grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru lived as Prime Minister. His schooling included Welham and Doon School. He married Sonia Maino in New Delhi in 1968, and they had a son, Rahul, and a daughter, Priyanka.

After school, Gandhi studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Imperial College London, with an interest in engineering. He later returned to India, trained at the Delhi Flying Club and obtained a commercial pilot’s licence. He worked for Indian Airlines before entering politics. His official biography describes interests in music, photography and amateur radio alongside aviation; it does not establish a completed engineering degree.

The death of his brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980 preceded Rajiv Gandhi’s entry into politics. He won the resulting Amethi parliamentary by-election and later became a Congress general secretary. He was involved in preparations for the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi. The Lok Sabha archive records his election in 1981 and re-election in 1984, 1989 and 1991, with the final result declared after his death.

Gandhi took office as Prime Minister on 31 October 1984 following Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Congress won the subsequent general election, and he remained Prime Minister until December 1989. He later served as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He died on 21 May 1991, before the declaration of that year’s election result, and was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in the same year.