Varun Gandhi to marry a Bengali

Bharatiya Janata Party’s fiery orator Varun Gandhi is set to pip the country’s most eligible bachelor, cousin Rahul Gandhi, to marriage.

Family sources said the member of Parliament from Pilibhit will tie the knot with Yamini Roy Chowdhury, a Bengali, in December. Political watchers feel the occasion could turn out to be an opportunity for the revival of relations between the ‘bahus’ of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, Sonia and Maneka.

News about the high-profile wedding broke when Varun’s mother Maneka Gandhi, the BJP MP from Aonla in West Uttar Pradesh, visited Varanasi to do trousseau-shopping for her would-be daughter-in-law. The sources said she was looking for Banarasi sarees, but since she didn’t like the gaudy colours available, she left after placing an order for sarees to be specially made.

Varun has known the Delhi girl for a few years. Originally from Shanti Niketan (West Bengal), Yamini graduated from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, and pursued a fashion designing course at a university in France.

The marriage promises to be a major event in the political calendar given the probability of Sonia Gandhi attending the nuptials along with Rahul and Priyanka. Despite Maneka’s strained relations with Sonia, Varun is known to have maintained close ties with the Gandhi family all along.