In a rare gesture, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has made an appeal on social media asking people to refrain from "being nasty" towards former Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had defeated him in Amethi with a margin of over 55,000 votes in 2019 and then lost to Gandhi family loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma - who was making his electoral debut - by over 1.6 lakh votes in this year's general elections.