Sitaram Kesri was back in the news on Sunday, two decades after he was removed from the Congress presidency, as the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duopoly again made the Nehru-Gandhi family the axis of their campaign for this round of Assembly elections.

The two men who control the BJP sought to provide a crash course in Congress history on the campaign trail and on social media, raising questions whether this was a strategy to fight the anti-incumbency the party faces in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said as much in a tweet: “It doesn’t say much about the incumbent government’s achievements if Sitaram Kesri is sought to be made an election issue in 2018!”

Kesri, who died in October 2000, headed the Congress between 1996 and 1998, when Sonia Gandhi replaced him as the party chief.

Prime Minister Modi and BJP chief Shah have been harping on the Nehru-Gandhi family’s control over the Congress, which has gone for the jugular on corruption via the “Rafale scam”, somewhat blunting the BJP’s rhetoric on this count.

The manner in which they have gone about attacking the Gandhis is being seen by many as clear evidence that the ruling party does not have an impressive report card to present to the people, reducing its campaign to a one-trick pony.

With over 7,000 tweets featuring his name by evening, Kesri was among the top 10 “India trends” on Twitter. That was after Modi had sought to counter the Congress comeback on his challenge to the Grand Old Party on Friday to give the presidency to someone from outside the family for five years by highlighting the machinations of the Nehru-Gandhi parivar’s courtiers in 1998 to make Sonia Gandhi party president.

On Saturday, former Union minister P. Chidambaram had listed the names of all Congress chiefs since 1947 who were not from the party’s first family in a bid to “jog PM Modi’s memory”. The veteran was economical with the facts, leaving out the bit about how Kesri was removed.

Not one to lose such an opportunity, Modi hit back at a rally in Mahasamund in Chhattisgarh. “I had challenged them to prove their democratic credentials that they claim to have by making someone from outside the family the president.

“One of their raag-darbaris (courtier) provided a list but that is not the answer to my question. The country knows how you removed Sitaram Kesri, a Dalit, from the post of party president…,” Modi said.

The reminder was swift in these days of instant news and citizen journalism via social media: Kesri was not a Dalit but an OBC.

Congress communications in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala drew attention to the BJP’s “margdarshak mandal” (euphemism for retirement home), where several BJP sidelined veterans, such as L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, have been placed since 2014.

“Can you please look in your own house and tell us what treatment you have meted out to BJP’s ‘kachchawar’ (RSS shorts-wearing) leaders like Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Kalraj Mishra, Keshubhai Patel, Haren Pandya, Suresh Bhai Mehta and Sanjay Joshi,” he tweeted.

This after Shah had posted a series of tweets endorsing Modi’s campaign pitch, saying the Prime Minister’s challenge had “ruffled several feathers”.

“Evidently, the PM’s point has struck a raw nerve!” he said.