Congress MP Karti Chidambaram has been issued a notice by party’s Tamil Nadu disciplinary committee over his remarks comparing the popularity of Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reported news agency ANI.

Disciplinary panel chief KR Ramasamy issued the show-cause notice to the son of former Union home minister P Chidambaram after the latter reportedly claimed that PM Modi is more popular than Rahul Gandhi during a television interview with a Tamil news channel, according to NDTV.

During the interview, he also expressed his faith in Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), while the Congress actively opposed the use of EVMs, citing concerns about their reliability.

On Monday, party general secretary Jairam Ramesh expressed his dissatisfaction over the response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) over concerns related to EVMs. Last month, he had written to the poll body seeking appointment for a delegation of INDIA bloc parties, to put forth their views on the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

Karti Chidambaram last week appeared before the Enforcement Directorate in connection with an alleged money laundering case linked to the issuance of Chinese visas.

Dubbing the ED summons as routine drills and ‘futile exercise’, the Congress MP fromTamil Nadu’s Sivaganga said, “These are routine drills with the (Lok Sabha) elections now approaching. There’s not much else to it. I have answered many summonses before. This was just a repeat of what I had already done before. It’s a futile exercise.”

The Congress leader is alleged to have received ₹50 lakh to illegally facilitate visas for 263 Chinese nationals to complete work on a power project in Punjab.

The probe agency filed a money laundering case in the Chinese visa ‘scam’ case in May 2023.