Does the finance minister eat avocado, Congress leader P. Chidambaram asked on Thursday, a day after Nirmala Sitharaman had told Parliament she comes from a family that is not bothered about onions.

Sitharaman’s “I-don’t-eat-onions” remark in the Lok Sabha was widely ridiculed on social media and by political opponents as “arrogant”, “elitist” and “casteist”.

The Congress protested the onion prices on Parliament premises and carried out a social media campaign against “Nirmala ka ahankar (the arrogance of Nirmala)’.

Chidambaram asked: “The finance minister said yesterday that she doesn’t eat onions, so what does she eat? Does she eat avocado?’’

The avocado jibe appeared to have stung Sitharaman, because she dug up an old remark by Chidambaram without naming him.

“Elitist we are, is it? I want to recall a statement by one of the former finance ministers when price rise was the issue,” she told the Rajya Sabha.

“I’m quoting here: ‘When the urban middle class can buy a bottle of mineral water for Rs 15 and ice-cream for Rs 20, why do they make so much noise about price rise?’ And these are people who are accusing me of being elitist.”