Rahul Gandhi dubs Union Cabinet as ‘parivar mandal’

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday targeted the Modi government over dynastic politics and dubbed the NDA ministry a "parivar mandal" as he pointed out several ministers in the Modi 3.0 government who hail from political families.

"Those who call the tradition of struggle, service and sacrifice of generations as nepotism are distributing the will of power to their 'sarkari parivar' (government family)," Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X. "This difference between the words and actions is called Narendra Modi," he added.

In his post, Gandhi named HD Kumaraswamy, son of former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, Jyotiraditya Scindia, son of former Union minister Madhav Rao Scindia, Kiren Rijiju, son of first pro tem speaker of Arunachal Pradesh Rinchin Kharu, Raksha Khadse, daughter-in-law of former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse, and Jayant Chaudhary, grandson of former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh as part of NDA's "Parivar mandal". To the list, he added Ram Nath Thakur, son of former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, Ram Mohan Naidu, son of former Union minister Terren Naidu, Jitin Prasada, son of former MP Jitendra Prasada, Rao Inderjit Singh, son of former Haryana chief minister Rao Birendra Singh, and Piyush Goyal, son of former Union minister Ved Prakash Goyal.

Ravneet Singh Bittu, grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, Anupriya Patel, daughter of Apna Dal founder Sonelal Patel, and Kirti Vardhan Singh, son of former Uttar Pradesh minister Maharaj Anand Singh, Chirag Paswan, son of former Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, and JP Nadda, son-in-law of former MP and Madhya Pradesh minister Jaysree Banerjee, were some of the others Gandhi said were products of nepotism.

Rahul Gandhi's post came in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing the Congress of practising "dynastic politics" during the election campaign for the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls.