Thiruvananthapuram: BJP state president K Surendran on Wednesday chose the Sam Pitroda controversy, where he made racist analogies in a podcast with The Statesman, to take a below-the-belt jibe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
In a post on social media platform X, he posted the clip of Sam Pitroda making the racist remarks with the caption: "I too am a south Indian. An innocent Malayali who has no doubts about his descent, unlike Rahul Gandhi".

Surendran contested against Rahul Gandhi as the NDA candidate in the Lok Sabha elections in Wayanad, which went to polls on April 26.

Interestingly, this was not the first time a politician from the state had remarked on Gandhi's descent. Recently, police filed a case against Nilambur MLA P V Anvar for making a similar comment against the Congress leader. He had referred to the incumbent Wayanad MP as a "worthless citizen" and suggested his DNA should be examined. Anvar made these comments during an election meeting in Palakkad on April 22, also stating that Rahul doesn't deserve to be referred by the Gandhi surname.

Meanwhile, Sam Pitroda tendered his resignation as head of the Indian Overseas Congress following the fiasco. In a podcast, Pitroda said, "We have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leaving aside a few fights here and there."

"We could hold the country as diverse as India together. Where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans. It does not matter. All of us are brothers and sisters. We respect different languages, different religions, different customs, different food," Pitroda said in the interview that was widely circulated on social media.

Dissociating itself from Pitroda's remarks, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on X: "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."