Rajasthan poll battle: Another Congress leader courts controversy, questions PM Modi's lineage

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The poll battle dipped to a new low on Sunday as another Congress leader took potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parents. In a video, which has now gone viral, senior Congress leader and former Union minister Vilas Muttemwar can be heard questioning the identity of PM Modi's father. 

Earlier, his two colleagues Raj Babbar and CP Joshi had also courted controversy by passing remarks on the prime minister's nonagenarian mother and his caste. 

"Who knew you (Modi) before you became the PM. Even now, nobody knows the name of your father, but everybody knows the name of (Congress president) Rahul Gandhi's father," Muttemwar is heard saying in the viral video. Muttemwar told PTI that the video, which was recorded at a party meeting in Rajasthan on Saturday, was distorted. "It was an internal party meeting yesterday. The person who shot the video distorted it and posted it online," he said. 

The Congress leader said it was a fact that people of the country knew who Rahul Gandhi's father was but not many knew about Modi's father. "The world knows past generations of Rahul Gandhi but no one knows who Modi's father was," he said.

Babbar had likened the falling rupee to the age of Modi's mother, after Joshi's casteist remark on the PM and Union minister Uma Bharti.

"Before becoming PM, Narendra Modi used to say that the value of the rupee has fallen to a level where it is almost the same as the age of the then-PM (Manmohan Singh). Now, it is inching towards the age of Modi's respected mother," Babbar had said.

The PM's mother, Heeraben Modi, is 98-years-old. 

Addressing a poll meeting in Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism.

(With inputs from PTI)