Chidambaram responds to PM Modi, lists out names of Congress presidents

New Delhi: Former Union minister P Chidambaram on Saturday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for targeting the Congress, reminding him of the party's legacy by listing out the names of its presidents from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family.

He asked the prime minister to now speak on the Rafale aircraft deal, unemployment and suicide of farmers during his rule.

In an election rally in Chhattisgarh on Friday, Modi had asked the Congress to make a Congressman, from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, president of the party for five years.

In a series of tweets, Chidambaram listed out the names and said the Congress was proud of the humble origins of its post-Independence leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, K Kamaraj and Manmohan Singh and many others besides thousand others during pre-Independence days.

"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 (sic)," he said.

In a dig at Modi, Chidambaram said he was grateful that the prime minister was "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?

"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?" he said.

At the rally in Ambikapur in north Chhattisgarh, Modi had also attacked Congress president Rahul Gandhi and asked him to give an account on the contributions of the four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family to the nation.