“Namaste, chaachi” (greetings, aunt) were the two words a smiling Feroze Varun Gandhi uttered when he came in front of Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. This was the first face-to-face meeting of the nephew and his aunt on a public platform after Varun’s infamous anti-Muslim speech at an election rally was slammed by Sonia Gandhi. Rahul and Priyanka — Sonia’s children — too didn’t approve their cousin’s hate speech.
For the first time, four members of the Nehru-Gandhi family will be present in the same Lok Sabha as Sonia and Rahul of the Congress and Maneka and Varun of the BJP have been elected to the Lower House. And on the first day, when the four Gandhis met in the House, there were mixed vibes between the two sides of India’s top political family.
While Varun and Sonia exchanged a smile and greetings between them before the new BJP MP took his oath in the House, Maneka completely ignored her sister-in-law while she walked past her to take the oath. Rahul too greeted many other BJP leaders sitting in the front row of the Opposition bench but didn’t look towards Maneka in the second row.
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