Chidambaram Lists 15 Congress Chiefs from Outside Nehru-Gandhi Family, Dares PM to 'Talk Rafale Now'

New Delhi: Former finance minister P Chidambaram on Saturday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and listed the names of Congress presidents from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family.

In a tweet, Chidambaram also dared the PM to 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 thousands 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.

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.