Rahul Gandhi has significantly increased his exposure to the Indian equity market in the last ten years with the value of the shares he owns standing at Rs 4.33 crore and mutual funds worth Rs 3.81 crore. The total valuation, stocks and mutual funds combined, worth Rs 8.14 crore is until March 15 2024, as per the latest affidavit Gandhi has filed ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Comparatively, Gandhi was seemingly conservative in his investments back in 2019. He held Rs 5.19 crore worth of mutual funds but had no direct investments in the stock market. And if one were to go back further in time when the Congress had failed to retain power in the 2014 general elections and lost to the BJP, Rahul Gandhi held less than Rs 1 crore in mutual funds. The net asset value of the mutual funds he held then was Rs 81.28 lakh. He had no direct stock market investments either.
Gandhi’s latest affidavit has a list of the stocks he holds. Valuation wise, the top five stocks he holds are Pidlite Industries, Bajaj Finance, Nestle India, Asian Paints and Titan. The biggest stock in his portfolio is Pidlite Industries at Rs 42.27 lakh. The stock has given 29.30% returns in the last 1 year. He owned shares worth Rs 35-36 lakh each of Asian Paints Ltd, Bajaj Finance Ltd and Nestle India Ltd. Among mid and smallcap stocks, he owns GMM Pfaudler shares worth Rs 14 lakh, Deepak Nitrite shares worth Rs 11.92 lakh, Tube Investments of India worth Rs 12.10 lakh, Fine Organics worth Rs 8.56 lakh and Info Edge worth Rs 4.45 lakh.
The top two investments in Rahul Gandhi’s mutual funds portfolio are HDFC Small Cap Reg-G worth Rs 1.23 crore and ICICI Prudential Reg Savings-G amounting to Rs 1.02 crore. Back in 2014, the two mutual funds in his portfolio were ‘Templeton India Low Duration Monthly Dividend Rein. Fund’ and ‘HDFC Cash Management Treasury Adv Ret Weekly Dividend Rein. Fund’. The combined net asset value of the two funds was Rs 81.28 lakh. Interestingly, the 'Templeton India Low Duration Monthly Dividend Rein. Fund' is the same fund as Franklin India Low Duration Fund, which was one of the six debt schemes Franklin Templeton had wound up in April 2020 amid severe market illiquidity due to the Covid-19's economic impact. Gandhi had exited his position in this particular fund more than a year before the fund shut and instead picked two other Franklin Templeton funds – Franklin India Equity-G and Franklin India Debt Hyb.
By 2019, Gandhi had widened his investments to 10 different mutual funds. His biggest holding was 33,037 units of Aditya Birla Sunlife worth Rs 74.90 lakh, followed by Franklin India Equity-G worth Rs 73.77 lakh. He also had investments in ICICI Prudential Regular L&T Equity-G and Motilal Oswal Multicap.
Beyond equity, the market value of Gandhi’s commercial property in Gurugram has increased a meagre 3.31% in the last five years from Rs 8.75 crore in 2019 to Rs 9.04 crore in 2024. He had purchased the property for Rs 7.93 crore. He made an investment in 220 units of Sovereign Gold Bond in FY21 which now stands at Rs 15.21 lakh. Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) are issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on behalf of the Government of India. These bonds are denominated in grams of gold and are a substitute for holding physical gold. But Gandhi has not made any investment in physical gold in the last 10 years. He held 333.300 grams of gold jewellery worth Rs 2.87 lakh in 2014, the value of which has increased to Rs 4.20 lakh as of 15 March 2024. Gandhi also jointly owns land worth Rs 2.10 crore with sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Mehrauli, New Delhi.
Meanwhile, Gandhi saw an 8 per cent drop in his annual income from Rs 1.11 crore in FY18, prior to the previous general elections, to Rs 1.02 crore in FY23. His annual income had seen a steady rise until FY22 when he disclosed Rs 1.31 crore in annual income tax returns. He has seemingly witnessed substantial growth due to the compounding effect of a PPF, with his investment increasing from Rs 20.70 lakh in 2014 to Rs 39.89 lakh in 2019, and currently stands at Rs 61.52 lakh. Gandhi declared his total assets in 2024 as worth Rs 20.4 crore.
Rahul Gandhi is the sitting MP from Kerala’s Wayanad constituency. He has filed his nomination papers from the same Lok Sabha seat for the upcoming general elections 2024. Among other major candidates, Gandhi will be competing against CPI’s Annie Raja and BJP’s K Surendran.