Former Union minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement challenging the Congress to appoint a person from outside one family as party chief for five years if it respected democracy, listing out names of persons outside the Nehru-Gandhi family who had occupied the top post in the party.
“To jog PM Modi’s memory: among the Congress presidents since 1947 were Acharya Kriplani, 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,” Mr. Chidambaram tweeted.
He added, taking a jibe at the Prime Minister: “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?”
He added: “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?
“We are proud of the humble origins of our post-independent leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Kamaraj, Dr. Manmohan Singh and many others. Pre-independence, there were thousands like them.”
