The Congress’s favourite international chaperone, Satyanarayan Gangaram “Sam” Pitroda, has put his party in a soup yet again.

The BJP’s claim that the Congress wants to redistribute the personal wealth of Indians to Muslims received a shot in the arm when Sam, chairman of the grand old party’s NRI wing Indian Overseas Congress, was deemed to be advocating inheritance tax.

His comment came in an interview with Asian News International, an agency the Opposition considers a member of the "godi media" — a lapdog of the BJP.

The Congress clarified that it had no intention of bringing in such a tax, a previous incarnation of which was abolished by the Rajiv Gandhi government’s finance minister, V.P. Singh, in 1985.

Its spokespersons cited how BJP leaders had pushed for such a tax in the past. Sam himself clarified he was merely supportive of such a tax as it existed in the US, and did not advocate it for India or the Congress.

Sam’s good intentions have often paved the way to hell for his party, though.

A former technology consultant to the governments of Indira Gandhi, her son Rajiv and Manmohan Singh, he had in 2019 questioned the veracity of the Centre's claims about an airstrike on suspected insurgents in Balakot, Pakistan, following the Pulwama terror strike.

Citing the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, Sam had further said that such terrorism "happens all the time" and the State response could not be indiscriminate or trigger-happy.

The manner in which Sam — an Odisha-born Gujarati — said this was used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to target Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

In April 2019, with Lok Sabha polls under way, Sam said the "middle class should not be selfish" and that more taxes were needed to fund his party’s minimum income scheme, to be implemented if it was elected to power. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram had to clarify that the Congress did not plan to hike taxes.

However, the Chicago-based Sam’s wrecking ball continued to swing during that year's general election.

The following month, May 2019, he responded to the BJP’s allegation that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

"What about 1984 now? Talk about what you did in the last five years. Eighty-four mein hua toh hua (What happened in 1984, happened)," he said.

The late Rajiv Gandhi’s son and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Sam should be "ashamed" and asked him to apologise — which he did while blaming his poor grasp of Hindi for his gaffe.

After cooling his heels for a bit, Sam discomfited Rahul again in June last year by talking about a topic his party did not want to talk about.

At an event in the US, with Rahul sharing the dais, Sam said: “No one talks about these things. But everyone talks about Ram, Hanuman, and Mandir. I have said that temples are not going to create jobs.”

Coming at a time when the Ayodhya temple was being built, the BJP was quick to label Rahul “Hinduphobic”.

In December, Sam’s comment that the BJP would win 400 seats if the EVMs weren’t fixed was projected by BJP supporters as the Congress’s premature acceptance of defeat.

In January this year, the 81-year-old Sam tweeted an article by Sudheendra Kulkarni, aide to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was Prime Minister, and said Jawaharlal Nehru had contributed more to the Constitution than B.R. Ambedkar. He later deleted the post after the BJP slammed the Congress as anti-Dalit.

Although politically incorrect, if not naïve, Sam is still loved by the Congress. Even while distancing the party from his latest remarks, Congress communications boss Jairam Ramesh reflected this warmth.

He tweeted on Wednesday: “Sam Pitroda has been a mentor, friend, philosopher, and guide to many across the world, including me. He has made numerous, enduring contributions to India’s developments…. This does not mean that Mr. Pitroda’s views always reflect the position of the Indian National Congress.”