Trinamul Congress MP Jawhar Sircar on Wednesday slammed Union minister S. Jaishankar for hitting out at the Gandhi family in an interview after “serving them most loyally and taking the best of postings” during his career in the foreign service.

“Strange — that Jaishankar discovered his angst against the Gandhis — after serving them most loyally and taking the best of postings under them?” Sircar said in a tweet.

“Is it Amnesia or is he just cuddling up to BJP for his unprecedented promotion as Foreign Minister?” he asked.

Jaishankar was joint secretary (Americas) at the ministry of external affairs from 2004 to 2007, a period when then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was refused a visa by the US for “grave allegations” over the 2002 Gujarat riots.

In an interview to news agency ANI on Tuesday, Jaishankar hit out at the Congress and poured praise on Prime Minister Modi.

In the interview, Jaishankar said his father K. Subrahmanyam was removed as secretary, defence production, by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi soon after she came back to power in 1980 and that his father was superseded during the Rajiv Gandhi years with someone junior to him becoming the cabinet secretary.

The Trinamul MP quoted from an article written by Jaishankar’s father, a civil servant and strategic affairs analyst, to slam the minister, accusing him of “serving Asura rulers of Gujarat”. “S. Jaishankar’s father K. Subramanyam said ‘Dharma was killed in Gujarat (2002 Riots). Those who failed to protect innocent citizens are guilty of adharma. Rama…would have used his bow against the Asura rulers of Gujarat’,” Sircar tweeted, quoting from the 2002 article.“Shame on son — serving Asura,” Sircar’s tweet added.

The article published in April 2002 was titled “Dharma was killed in Gujarat” and had described the then “rulers of Gujarat” as “asura (demon)” for failing to protect the lives of innocent Muslims during the post-Godhra riots. It did not name Modi, who was then chief minister of Gujarat.

Sircar, the former culture secretary in the government of India, also hit out at Jaishankar for dubbing the BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots as politically motivated.

“Question is: Are the facts shown (in the documentary) true or false? Could thousands of lives be saved if Modi administration was less indulgent?” he asked in another tweet.