Sonia Gandhi and family skip Varun wedding

BJP MP Varun Gandhi married his lady love of seven years Yamini Roychowdhry at a simple ceremony in Varanasi on Sunday morning. The highlight of this high-profile wedding was the absence of the other Gandhi family, signalling that the divide between the two bahus of the Nehru-Gandhi family is far from over.

Varun himself went to 10, Janpath, to invite aunt Sonia and family but neither she nor her children, Rahul or Priyanka, turned up.

Varun, who had attended Priyanka’s marriage in 1997, explained that Priyanka didi could not make it as she wasn’t well while Rahul is nursing a fractured leg. “All who were supposed to come came,” Maneka Gandhi said.

The wedding at the Sri Kashi Kamkoteshwar Temple on Hanuman Ghat was a simple affair with the strains of the shehnai, blowing of conch shells and chanting of mantras by 21 brahmins.

Shankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakothi Peeth, Swami Jayendra Saraswati presided over the ceremony. Varun wore a white kurta and yellow dhoti while Yamini wore a seven-decade-old onion-coloured silk saree which, family sources said, was given to Maneka by Kamala Nehru.

Yamini is now the third bahu of the Nehru-Gandhi family after Sonia, who married Rajiv Gandhi in 1968, and Maneka, who married Sanjay in 1974. The daughter of former diplomat Sunil Roy and renowned film critic Aruna Vasudev, Delhi-born Yamini is a fashion designer.