Sam Pitroda, reinstated as head of the Overseas Indian Congress, clarified that party general secretary Jairam Ramesh’s claim that Pitroda assured leaders that he would avoid controversy was his “personal opinion, not the party’s official position.”
Pitroda emphasized his right to make mistakes. “Congress is not saying that. Jairam is saying it. What Jairam says is his opinion, not necessarily the party’s. It’s okay for Jairam to say that and I respect that. I have to do what I have to do. In the process, I have the right to make mistakes,” Pitroda said in an interview with NDTV.
In a newspaper article in May, Pitroda described India as a “diverse country… where the people of the East look like the Chinese, the people of the West look like the Arabs, the people of the North look like white and the people of the South look like Africans. This statement, along with his comments about the inheritance tax, sparked an uproar just before the election.
Pitroda expressed frustration that no one had asked him for clarification before drawing conclusions. “When I mentioned inheritance tax, I did not mean that I was proposing it. How do you come to that conclusion?” he asked.
He also defended his comments about diversity, which some perceived as racial. “The next time I said something about how diverse we are, people thought it was racial. There’s nothing racial about saying we come from Africa. It’s a fact of life. And who says being black is racist? No. I’m dark. My wife’s not very dark. So what?” he said.
The controversy surrounding his comments had threatened to divert Congress from key issues such as unemployment, inflation and broader issues of the constitution and democracy.
After he resigned, the BJP called it a stunt, with PM Modi saying it was part of the Congress’ strategy to create confusion by predicting Pitroda’s return. “As anticipated by PM Modi, the Congress’s sacking of Sam Pitroda was merely an electoral stunt. He has now been reinstated as the Overseas Indian Congress president, exposing the hypocrisy of the Congress party and its leaders,” the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on X.
