Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi delivered a sharp public rebuke on Sunday, October 25, accusing Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge of dragging Prime Minister Narendra Modi's late father into an election rally — a line, he said, that exposes the opposition's 'absolute intellectual bankruptcy.'

The remark that sparked the broadside

Kharge, the 82-year-old head of India's oldest party and former Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, reportedly used the phrase 'Modi ka baap' ('Modi's father') at an election rally. Majhi, writing directly to Kharge on X, called the moment a 'masterclass in opposition leadership' — dripping with sarcasm — and accused the Congress chief of defaulting to 'personal abuse' precisely because the party has, in his telling, no developmental vision, no governance record, and 'zero ground beneath your feet.' The post did not specify which election the rally was held for, but the context points to campaign season in an upcoming state or by-poll cycle where both parties are actively mobilising.

Majhi's case against a 138-year-old party

The Odisha CM leaned hard into Congress's institutional age as an amplifier of the offence. 'For a 138-year-old party that incessantly lectures the nation on constitutional morality and democratic decency,' he wrote, 'the mask slips with remarkable predictability the moment an election looms.' The framing is deliberate: the older and more storied the party, the more damaging the lapse. Majhi also turned the electoral arithmetic against Kharge, noting that 'street-level slurs' have not translated into mandates — an allusion to Congress's string of state-election losses since 2014, a period during which the party has surrendered power across a wide swathe of India while retaining government in only a handful of states.

A pattern with deep roots in Indian poll campaigns

Personal references to leaders' family backgrounds are not new in Indian electoral politics. Since 2014, BJP-Congress campaigns have repeatedly escalated from policy contrasts to character attacks, each side accusing the other of lowering the bar. The BJP has frequently cited Modi's humble origins — he has spoken publicly about selling tea as a child — as a point of pride; any perceived slight against that lineage tends to draw a swift, coordinated response from party ranks. Majhi, who became Chief Minister of Odisha in June 2024 after the BJP's decisive victory in the state assembly elections, used the moment to position himself as a national voice within the party, not merely a regional administrator. Whether Kharge's exact phrasing constitutes a direct personal attack on the Prime Minister's deceased father, or was intended differently in the rally context, will likely define how the controversy travels through the campaign cycle. What is already clear: the BJP's counter-messaging machine is fully in motion — and Majhi has put his name at the front of it.