In 2017, Mani Shankar Aiyar by his "neech" comment against Prime Minister Narendra Modi helped the saffron party. In 2014, Aiyar asked Modi to start selling tea at the complex where AICC session was on.
This year, Sam Pitroda emerged as a 'serial offender' leaving the Rahul Gandhi camp embarrassed. After making an unwarranted remark on inheritance tax, Piroda this time said eastern Indian people look like Chinese, western people like Arabs and so on.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined the issue and blasted the Congress leader. Other leaders also followed him.
Congress leader Sam Pitroda has now stepped down from the post of Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress and his resignation has been accepted by the party.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took to X and announced that Sam Pitroda had decided to resign from the key post "of his own accord". Did Ramesh need to be so categorical?
Pitroda had been under fire over his controversial remark that Indians in the East resemble the Chinese while those in the South look like Africans.
"We could hold together a country as diverse as India -- where people on East look like Chinese, people on West look like Arab, people on North look like maybe White and people in South look like Africans. It doesn't matter. We are all brothers and sisters," Pitroda said during an interview.
The Congress distanced itself from Pitroda's remarks, terming them "unacceptable" but the damage was done. In 2019 polls, Pitroda almost sought to justify the anti-Sikh riots and had gone to the extent of saying, "Hua toh Hua (It happened, so what?".
Even in 2019, PM Modi and others had slammed the Congress party and Pittoda as well.
"The analogies drawn by Mr Sam Pitroda in a podcast to illustrate India's diversity are most unfortunate and unacceptable. The Indian National Congress completely dissociates itself from these analogies," Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X on Pitroda's alleged racist remarks.
The BJP also hit out at the Congress over Pitroda's remarks and termed them "racist and divisive".
Before this, Sam Pitroda sparked a controversy after he appeared to advocate for a US-style Inheritance Tax in India. In an interview with a news agency Sam Pitroda had called for a policy for wealth redistribution while citing the concept of inheritance tax in some American states.
"In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has 100 million USD worth of wealth and when he dies, he can only transfer probably 45 per cent to his children and 55% goes to the government. That’s an interesting law.
It says you, in your generation, made wealth and you are leaving now, you must leave your wealth for the public, not all of it, half of it, which to me sounds fair,” Pitroda had said.
He later clarified saying his statements were twisted and had nothing to do with the Congress or the party's manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Earlier in the day, Modi said addressing a poll rally in Telangana's Warangal district:
"I can tolerate it when abuses are hurled at me, but not when they are hurled at my people. Can we decide a person's merit based on skin colour?....No matter what the colour of one's skin is, we are the people who worship Lord Krishna. I am very angry today. The people who keep the Constitution above their heads are insulting people on the basis of their skin colour".
"Who permitted 'shehzaada' (prince in reference to Rahul Gandhi) to look down on my people like that? 'Shehzaade' you will have to answer. We will not accept this racist mentality," the Prime Minister added.
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