Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram in a stern reply to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday listed out 15 names of political leaders, who have served as the President of the Congress party outside the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Chidambaram’s reply came days after PM Modi had challenged the Congress party to make at least one congressmen outside the Nehru-Gandhi family president of the party for five years. Chidambaram list of 15 Congress leaders that became the party’s president in the past included Acharya Kripalani, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, C Subramanian and Sanjiva Reddy.
In a series of tweets, the 73-year-old hit out at Modi saying that he is “grateful that PM Modi is concerned” about who is elected as Congress president and has devoted a lot of time talking about it. Chidambaram also asked Mr. Modi if he would “spend half the time to think about demonetisation, GST, Rafale, CBI and the RBI.”
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He further asked will PM Modi speak about farmers’ suicides, massive unemployment, lynchings, rape crimes against women and children, anti-Romeo squads, gau rakshak vigilantism and increasing terror attacks which are constantly occurring across the country.
“To jog PM Modi’s memory: among the Congress Presidents since 1947 were Acharya Kripalani,Pattabhi Sitaramayya,Purushottamdas Tandon,U N Dhebar,Sanjiva Reddy,Sanjivaiah,Kamaraj,Nijalingappa,C Subramanian,Jagjivan Ram,Shankar Dayal Sharma,D K Barooah,Brahmananda Reddy,P V Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri,” added Chidambaram.
Earlier, Modi had attacked the Congress during an election rally in Chattisgarh on Friday. He said that a family whose “four generations ruled the country” cannot comprehend how the son of a poor mother could sit on the “rajgaddi” (throne).
Addressing a rally at Ambikapur in north Chhattisgarh, he asked Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to give an account of what the four generations of the (Nehru-Gandhi) family have done for the country before asking for an account of his government has done in four-and-half years’ rule.