India, July 24 -- Former union minister Smriti Irani recalled her early days in the BJP and spoke about how her father would drop her off at the gates of the Prime Minister's residence, and not want to come in, during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's time because of being a Congress supporter.

Her mother, she said, was a supporter of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent body of the BJP.

"Father Congress, mother Sanghi!" she quipped.

She counted her RSS-supporting maternal grandfather as the major household influence on her political choices.

"I remember how my nana would walk daily for the RSS shakha in Sector 6, RK Puram," she said in an interview with India Today TV in which she went to see her old home in Delhi.

"Th...