Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari’s social media post about the regime changes in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal has landed him at the centre of a political row. With the BJP claiming that his remarks target Rahul Gandhi, Mr Tewari has said “everything does not have to be dumbed down to a Congress-BJP”.
Sharing a news report on a mass protest in the Philippines to protest alleged corruption over bogus or substandard flood control projects, Mr Tewari said the huge public movements in Asia show that “entitlement is no longer acceptable”
“The toppling of – President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka in July 2023, Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh in July 2024, KP Sharma Oli in Nepal in September 2025 and now the protests against Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Philippines have one word written over them. ENTITLEMENT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE TO GEN X, Y, Z,” he said. “Watch for my piece on ‘The Social Media Trends that toppled or are challenging ‘DYNASTS ‘ Study #nepokids or #TrillionPesoMarch in the meantime.”
The BJP was quick to use the Lok Sabha MP’s remark to target the Congress leadership.
“Senior Congress leader Manish Tewari, member of the G-23 rebel group, takes aim at Rahul Gandhi – the ultimate ‘Nepo Kid’ of Indian politics. Forget Gen Z, even Congress’s own veterans are fed up with his regressive politics. The revolt is now from within,” senior BJP leader and head of its IT wing Amit Malviya said in a post on X.
Mr Tewari hit back at Mr Malviya with a swipe. “Gosh, I just wish that some people would grow up in life. Everything does not have to be dumbed down to a Cong-BJP, ‘he said she said’ or targeting X or Y.
“What is happening in South Asia and East Asia has serious National Security implications and why it is happening needs to be understood in the correct perspective,” Mr Tewari wrote.
BJP MP and spokesperson Sambit Patra, too, commented on the Congress leader’s post. “People in our country have already removed the nepo kid in 2014,” he told the media, targeting the Congress.
Earlier, Mr Tewari, a former Union Minister and MP from Chandigarh, had made headlines when the Congress leadership benched him during the parliamentary debate on Operation Sindoor.
Sharing a news report about not being on the list of Congress speakers for the debate, he had captioned it with the evergreen patriotic song from Purab Aur Pachhim (1970): “Hai preet jahaan ki reet sada, main geet wahaan ke gaata hoon, Bharat ka rehne waala hoon, Bharat ki baat sunata hoon. Jai Hind.” When the media asked him about his post, the Congress MP had replied, “There is a saying in English, ‘If you don’t understand my silence, you will never understand my words’.”
Mr Tewari was part of an Indian delegation that travelled abroad as part of New Delhi’s global outreach after Operation Sindoor. Some reports have claimed that Mr Tewari reached out to the party leadership and said he wanted to speak, but this request was turned down. They said the party was apprehensive that the MPs part of the Indian delegations that went abroad may not mount as scathing an attack on the government as the Opposition party wants them to.
