File picture of Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. (Agence France-Presse)
All 15 Congress lawmakers staged a walkout at Haryana Assembly today after hearing their purported take on OROP from the ruling BJP. According to Haryana's health minister Anil Vij, OROP - which stands for One Rank One Pension for Congress means "One Rahul, One Priyanka."
The minister's jibe came during a discussion over a thanksgiving motion for the Narendra Modi government, which announced the scheme -- a longstanding demand of ex-servicemen -- last week.
The BJP has already targeted the Congress for failing to deliver on the demand. And on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said not only had the previous governments failed to deliver, but the Congress-led UPA government had even made errors while calculating the costs the exchequer will incur.
"For the previous government this OROP was about Rs. 500 crore," PM Modi had said. This, he had hinted, had also misled the BJP, which was also why it took so long to make the announcement.
"We expected it to be around 700 crore," he said, adding that when he went "deeper into the issue" he found it would incur a cost of Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 10,000 crore.
The furious Congress had questioned the Prime Minister if the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was included in his definition of "earlier governments".
Former Chief Minister BS Hooda later said it was the Congress-led government that had allocated Rs 500 crore for OROP in its budget for the first time.
Mr Vij, a known Congress baiter, had last earned the party's wrath by calling them "Angrezon ka aulad" (a progeny of the British) - a reference to the party's being founded by Alan Octavian Hume.
The jibe had come after the Congress lawmakers had staged a walkout when he had suggested renaming the rural sports complexes that had been named after Rajiv Gandhi.