NEW DELHI: Union minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday criticized the Congress party for reinstating
Sam Pitroda
as the chairman of the
Indian Overseas Congress
, just weeks after he stepped down from the position due to
controversial comments
made during the
Lok Sabha elections
.
Rijiju took to X, stating, "Prime Minister Modi had predicted! Rahul Gandhi Ji's adviser who said, 'South Indians look like Africans, North-Eastern people look Chinese, West Indians are like Arabs & North Indians are whites' is
reinstated
.
We are not surprised as
PM Modi
ji had predicted."
The minister referred to an old interview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where he suggested that Congress leaders make controversial statements in a calculated manner, briefly distancing themselves from the party before being reintegrated into mainstream politics.
"I sometimes think the party (the Congress), in a well-planned way, does this. I don't think they (the members) do this on their own. Then they are kept out of the party for a few days. Then they come back into the mainstream again," PM Modi had said in the interview.
"This is what they did with their guru in America. He has resigned. Now he will be brought back again after a while... It is their well-considered strategy to create confusion in the country, change the atmosphere, create new issues, compel their opponents to react on these issues," he added.
Pitroda's remarks during a podcast, where he used ethnic and racial identities to describe the physical appearance of Indians from various regions, sparked significant controversy.
Congress was quick to distance itself from Pitroda's statements, labeling them as "most unfortunate and unacceptable."
Previously, Pitroda's comments about inheritance tax in the United States while discussing the Congress' Lok Sabha poll manifesto provided the BJP with ammunition to accuse the opposition party of targeting citizens' assets as part of their "redistribution of wealth" policy.
English (US) ·