Rahul Gandhi on Friday intervened to call for a stop to the trolling of former Union minister Smriti Irani on her vacating the government bungalow after her Lok Sabha poll defeat, pointing out that "humiliating and insulting people is a sign of weakness, not strength".

Irani vacated her Tughlaq Crescent bungalow on Thursday, prompting a day of ridicule. Her loss in Amethi to a Gandhi family loyalist in the 18th Lok Sabha elections has been particularly celebrated by supporters of Rahul, who have been nursing a grudge since 2019 when Irani made him bite the dust in the constituency.

"Winning and losing happen in life. I urge everyone to refrain from using derogatory language and being nasty towards Smt. Smriti Irani or any other leader for that matter. Humiliating and insulting people is a sign of weakness, not strength," the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha posted on X.

For Irani-baiters, this was another arrow in their quiver. They used it to show a contrast between the two politicians, pulling out videos of the former minister targeting Rahul inside and outside Parliament. On more than one occasion, Irani has led the government benches' charge against Rahul in Parliament and mocked him often enough outside, basking in the "giant-killer" status she earned in 2019 after defeating him in the Nehru-Gandhi family pocket borough.

Irani did not respond to Rahul’s post but BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya did.

"This is the most disingenuous message, ever. After unleashing Congress leaders, like a pack of wolves, on the woman who defeated him in Amethi and smashed his arrogance to smithereens, this is rich. All this gibberish doesn’t take away from the fact that Smt Smriti Irani forced balak buddhi to abandon Amethi," he said.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the term "balak buddhi (childlike intelligence)" to describe Rahul in Parliament in the opening session of the 18th Lok Sabha, this has become a refrain of sorts for the BJP, eager to replicate the "Pappu" tag that took the Congress MP years to shake off.

While the immediate provocation for Rahul’s tweet was the trolling of Irani, he also appeared to be trying to make a larger point of maintaining a certain standard in public discourse.

His intervention comes at a time when the Congress has launched a "bael buddhi (dimwit)" campaign to target Modi as a counter to the BJP's "balak buddhi" narrative.

Either way, the post by Rahul is yet another addition to his growing list of surprise moves that are now keeping the BJP guessing — be it his maiden speech as LoP in the Lok Sabha where he took on the BJP’s brand of Hinduism like no one else has done since the beginning of the "Ram Janmabhoomi movement", the battle cry in Gujarat, the reconciliatory avatar in Manipur or the latest Gandhigiri.