Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday called out the “doublespeak” of the BJP on dynastic politics after it became clear that over a quarter of the ministers in the new ministry of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are from political families.

Though six of those featured in Rahul’s list of 20 dynasts that form part of what he calls “parivar mandal” instead of “mantri mandal” (ministry) have been members of Modi’s previous ministries, this is the first time the scion of the Congress’s first family has made a frontal attack on the BJP with the stick that has been often used against him.

Posting a list of dynastic politicians in the council of ministers, Rahul wrote on X in Hindi: “Those who call the tradition of struggle, service and sacrifice of generations as nepotism are distributing power to their ‘government family’. This doublespeak is called Narendra Modi.”

Nine of those on the list are cabinet ministers H.D. Kumaraswamy, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju, Chirag Paswan, J.P. Nadda, Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu, Piyush Goyal, Virendra Kumar Khatik and Dharmendra Pradhan.

Kumaraswamy is the son of former PM H.D. Deve Gowda, Scindia is a third-generation politician, Rijiju’s father was the first protem Speaker of Arunachal Pradesh, Chirag is the son of Ram Vilas Paswan, Nadda is the son-in-law of former Madhya Pradesh minister Jayshree Banerjee, the fathers of Naidu, Goyal and Pradhan were former Union ministers and Khatik’s father-in-law was a former minister of Madhya Pradesh.

The other ministers from political families on the list are Raksha Khadse, Jayant Chaudhary, Kamlesh Paswan, Ram Nath Thakur, Jitin Prasada, Shantanu Thakur, Rao Inderjit Singh, Kirti Vardhan Singh, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Anupriya Patel and Annapurna Devi.

Raksha is the daughter-in-law of former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse, Jayant is a third-generation politician, Paswan’s father was a politician, Thakur is Karpoori Thakur’s son, Jitin is Congress leader Jitendra Prasada’s son, Shantanu is a former Bengal minister’s son, Inderjit is former Haryana CM’s son, Kirti is a former UP minister’s son, Ravneet is the son of slain Punjab CM Beant Singh, Anupriya is a BSP founding member’s daughter and Annapurna is the wife of a former Bihar MLA.

None of them matches the Nehru-Gandhi lineage in duration in politics but Rahul going on the offensive on dynastic politics marks a shift and comes on the heels of him silencing his critics – who see him as an entitled dynast – with the Bharat Jodo Yatras and the Congress campaign for the 18th Lok Sabha polls.