The political slugfest between the Congress party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the run up to the general election next year, has reached a new low with the leaders of both parties dragging each others’ kin into their election rallies.
First it was senior Congress leader Raj Babbar appropriating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mother to settle scores with his party, then it was Modi himself who said the grand old party was abusing his mother because they cannot fight him.
And now it is a former Cabinet minister who has apparently asked the prime minister the name of his father.
A video that has since gone viral purportedly shows former Union minister Vilasrao Muttemwar comparing the lineage of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and PM Modi, citing “the world knows who the father of Rahul Gandhi was, who the grandmother of Rahul Gandhi was, but nobody knows the name of Modi’s father.”
“Even before Rahul Gandhi ventured into politics, people knew his five generations. People knew who his father was — Rajiv Gandhi, who his grandmother was — Indira Gandhi, who his great grandfather was — Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But this Narendra [Modi]! Nobody knows who his father was, till date,” he is seen saying in the video tweeted by Amit Malviya, in-charge of BJP’s national information and technology cell.
This has come in the wake of several rhetoric exchanges between the two largest political parties in the nation, mostly aimed at the family history of the members of the parties. While the BJP believes Rahul Gandhi doesn’t deserve to be at the position he has acquired because of his surname ‘Gandhi’, Congress says he is the rightful heir to the party’s, and most importantly, family’s legacy.
The BJP has, as a matter of fact, always boasted about PM Modi’s humble beginnings.
This difference in opinion has led to the parties indulging in a contest that spares no one, not even PM Modi’s 98-year-old mother.