In Texas, Congress chief Sam Pitroda whipped out his pistols in cowboy type and shot himself within the foot. “I need to inform you, Rahul Gandhi isn’t any Pappu,” said Pitroda emphatically on Monday, with Rahul Gandhi on the dais. What was alleged to be a reward by Pitroda, the Chairperson of the Indian Abroad Congress, reminded individuals of the tag that not even the BJP now makes use of to consult with Rahul.
It was the BJP that popularised “Pappu” for Rahul Gandhi to indicate him missing in intelligence.
Rahul Gandhi walked and labored to shed that tag.
Political commentators have stated in unison that Rahul shed that notion with the Bharat Jodo Yatra, when he walked from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, a distance of 4,000 km, to attach with individuals.
Rahul Gandhi then spearheaded the Congress’s 2024 Lok Sabha election marketing campaign and led the narrative for the BJP to comply with.
His khatakhat-khatakhat was the dominant sound of the 2024 normal election. His argument that the BJP was looking for 400+ seats to vary the Structure and his message on wealth switch reached the grassroots. BJP leaders have been at all times left countering his claims.
With Samajwadi Get together’s Akhilesh Singh, Rahul constructed the ‘UP ke Ladke’ picture.
In a battle the place notion is all the things, the Congress virtually doubled its 2019 tally to 99 in 2024, and efficiently projected the BJP’s 240 seats as a loss.
Within the position of the Chief of Opposition (LoP) within the Lok Sabha, Rahul has saved up his assaults on the federal government, even forcing a uncommon intervention from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
With this picture makeover, even the BJP has not referred to Rahul Gandhi as “Pappu” within the latest previous.
When PM Modi attacked him, with out naming him, he used the time period “balak buddhi” (childlike intelligence).
That’s what Union minister Kiren Rijiju too used to assault Rahul just lately, not “Pappu”.
That’s the reason it got here as a nice shock when Sam Pitroda, a senior Congress chief, reminded folks that Rahul Gandhi was as soon as known as “Pappu”.
“Rahul Gandhi’s agenda is to handle a number of the bigger points, he has a imaginative and prescient opposite to what BJP promotes by spending crore and crore of rupees. I need to inform you he isn’t ‘Pappu’, he’s extremely educated, he’s a strategist with deep pondering on any topic,” stated Pitroda in Texas.
Reacting to the talk after Pitroda’s “Pappu” reminder, Rijiju stated: “Mr Sam Pitroda is blaming BJP with no causes. Congress leaders gave this title ‘Pappu’ to Rahul Gandhi ji. Please never-ever blame BJP for all his failures and his balk buddhi”.
BJP leaders knew that Pitroda had accomplished the job for them, and latched on to his remarks.
“Think about introducing Balak Buddhi Rahul Gandhi as, ‘He’s no Pappu…’. Sam Pitroda simply did that,” stated BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya.
This is not the primary time that the Congress was on the again foot on Pappu remarks.
“You known as Rahul Gandhi Pappu, and he has made you [BJP] a Pappu,” Adhir Ranjan, then chief of the Congress within the Lok Sabha, stated in Parliament in 2023.
That noticed a fast comeback with Union Residence Minister Amit Shah. He embarrassed the Congress by telling him that “a revered parliamentarian cannot be known as Pappu”.
Pitroda, the Congressman from the Rajiv Gandhi-years, isn’t any stranger to controversy.
On Could 8, when the Lok Sabha elections have been underway, he sparked outrage after saying that “Indians within the nation’s east resemble the Chinese language whereas these within the South appear to be Africans“.
Pitroda resigned as the top of the Abroad Congress however was reinstated a month later.
After making the remarks that have been deemed racist, Pitroda defended himself, saying, “Perhaps the comparability was not that nice. I’m a human being and allowed to make errors. Speak to me, make clear with me about what I stated. However do not run like a wildfire.”
Nevertheless, within the Rahul Gandhi is “not Pappu” case, there isn’t any requirement for any clarification. It is simply that it’s a Congressman who has reminded Indians of a tag that the nation appeared to have forgotten for some time. And Texas isn’t any Vegas. What occurs in Texas spreads the world over.