After Rahul barb, BJP boasts of RSS connection of PM Modi, ministers

NEW DELHI: BJP today flaunted its association with RSS, asserting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and many other ministers are RSS workers, a day after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi charged the Hindutva organisation with promoting mediocrity.

Taking a swipe at the main opposition party, BJP said it had "supreme satisfaction" that its leaders do not look to a family to get certificate of their intelligence.

"RSS is a nationalist organisation which has produced scholars, intellectual of integrity and political leaders. I will like to tell Rahul Gandhi humbly that I too am a 'swayamsevak' (RSS volunteer) and many ministers, including the prime minister, in this government are 'swayamsevaks'," senior BJP leader and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Raking up the alleged scams in the 10 years of the UPA rules, he wondered if these were committed by intelligent people promoted by Gandhi or mediocre ones.

On a visit to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) campus yesterday to extend support to the students agitating for removal of Gajendra Chauhan as chairman, Rahul had said the RSS and its ideologues are "undermining" the institution's stature by promoting "mediocrity" and bullying the critics as "anti-national" and "anti-Hindu".

Citing the government's decision to release a series of postal stamps on well-known singers, writers, freedom-fighters and painters, Prasad attacked Congress and said its dispensations had been promoting only one family (Nehru-Gandhi) while ignoring greats like Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and Subhash Chandra Bose.