Sam Pitroda stepped down from his position as the chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress and his resignation was accepted by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, said Jairam Ramesh.
This comes after his racist comment on how Indians from different parts of the country looked created a huge political uproar amid the Lok Sabha elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke condemning the statements made by Pitroda.
Now based in the United States, Pitroda was an advisor to Rajiv Gandhi when he was the Prime Minister. He was invited by former PM Manmohan Singh to lead the National Knowledge Commission of India as the head after the UPA won in the 2004 general election. Pitroda then became advisor to Manmohan Singh on public information infrastructure in 2009.
He has been in controversies previously, however, this time it has gone beyond damage control for the Congress who were quick to distance from what he said calling his statement unfortunate.
Talking about how Indians lived together united in the last 75 years because the Congress held the country with so much diversity together, Sam Pitroda said in an interview that people in the east look like Chinese, West like Arabs, etc, to drive his point on the differences.
"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," said Sam Pitroda.
In the wake of the comments, Jairam Ramesh said that Sam Pitroda's analogy of unity in diversity was unacceptable, unfortunate and absolutely wrong. He said, "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."
At his rallies in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, PM Modi said that he was angry over the comments made by Rahul Gandhi's Sam uncle on the skin colour of Indians. He said that President Droupadi Murmu's presidential bid was opposed by the Congress because they saw her as an African due to her dark skin.
PM Modi questioned whether the Congress chief ministers of Telangana and Karnataka would accept the analogy and whether Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin would snap DMK's ties with the Congress.
