Rajiv Gandhi was born in 1944. He was the first son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi. He became the seventh Prime Minister of India in 1984, after the assassination of his mother. Gandhi had studied at Cambridge University and met wife Sonia there. After brother Sanjay's death in 1980, he got introduced to the political spectrum by Indira Gandhi.

 

 

 

Apart from his ministerial accomplishments, Rajiv Gandhi is remembered through some other interesting facts. Here are 10 of them:

 

1. He was christened as Rajiv to pay homage to his maternal grandfather Kamala Nehru. The word 'Kamala' refers to goddess Lakshmi and 'Rajiv' is another term for lotus, which is used to worship the deity

 

2. He was a member of the Flying Club, where he received training in civil aviation

 

3. He joined Air India in 1970 and worked there till he got into politics in 1980

 

4. He loved computers and gadgets. As a minister, he stressed on the advancement of digitisation within the country

 

5. He was elected as the president of the youth wing of the Congress in 1981

6. Till date, he is still the youngest Prime Minister the country has ever had. He took the position at the young age of 40

 

7. It was under his leadership that the Congress won its largest majority in the Lok Sabha, with a record 411 seats of the 542

 

8. He was nicknamed Mr Clean because of his fight against corruption

 

9. In May 1991, he made an unscheduled stop at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, to garland Indira Gandhi's statue.

 

10. During the garlanding ceremony he was assassinated by LTTE, a separatist organisation from Sri Lanka.