Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel on Thursday expressed his disapproval at former President Pranab Mukherjee visiting the RSS headquarters in Nagpur and said he did not expect this from him.

Patel, who is UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s close confidante, and has been her political secretary, voiced his view on Twitter, in reply to Mukherjee’s daughter who spoke out against the decision of the former President to address an RSS event.

“I did not expect this from Pranab da!” Patel said in his one line tweet:

I did not expect this from Pranab da ! https://t.co/VBqXZ8x7SE

— Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) June 6, 2018

Congress leader Sharmistha Mukherjee had on Wednesday said her father was giving the BJP and the Sangh a handle to plant false stories.

His “speech will be forgotten” but the “visuals will remain”, she said on Twitter. She also expressed hope that the former president would realise how the BJP’s “dirty tricks department” works and warned him of the consequences of attending such a meet.

Pranab Mukherjee is in Nagpur today to address an RSS event in the evening.

The visit has given rise to a lot of speculation and has been opposed by the Congress. Some party leaders, including Jairam Ramesh and CK Jaffar Sharief have written to him. A few others, including Anand Sharma, have personally visited him to dissuade him from going to Nagpur.

Sharmistha’s outburst came soon after rumours about her joining the BJP cropped up. She dismissed the rumours as false and the handiwork of BJP’s “dirty tricks department”. She said she would rather leave politics than quit Congress.