India
In an election rally in Chhattisgarh on Friday, PM Modi had asked the Congress to make a Congressman from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family the party president for five years
Updated : Nov 18, 2018, 05:40 AM IST
Countering Prime Minister Narendra Modi's frequent attacks on the Congress' dynasty culture, former Union finance minister P Chidambaram hurled back at him names of 14 party presidents who did not belong to Gandhi or Nehru family.
In an election rally in Chhattisgarh on Friday, PM Modi had asked the Congress to make a Congressman from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family the party president for five years.
Chidambaram took a jibe at the PM and said, "Grateful that PM Modi is concerned about who is elected as Congress president and he devotes a lot of time talking about it. Will he spend half the time and speak about demonetisation, GST, Rafale, CBI and the RBI?"
In a series of tweets, Chidambaram asked PM Modi if he would speak on farmers' suicides, massive unemployment, lynchings, rape crimes against women and children, anti-Romeo squads, gau rakshak vigilantism and increasing terror attacks.
"To jog PM Modi's memory: among the Congress presidents since 1947 were Acharya Kripalani, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Purushottamdas Tandon, UN Dhebar, Sanjiva Reddy, Sanjivaiah, Kamaraj, Nijalingappa, C Subramanian, Jagjivan Ram, Shankar Dayal Sharma, DK Barooah, Brahmananda Reddy, PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri," he tweeted.
Responding to Modi's consistent efforts to project himself as a lesser mortal "kaamdar" who rose from the ranks to become the Prime Minister, Chidambaram said, "We are proud of the humble origins of our post-Independence leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Kamaraj, Dr Manmohan Singh and many others. Pre-Independence, there were thousands like them."