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tongue”.
Chowdhury’s “rashtrapatni” remark snowballed into a major political row with the BJP accusing the opposition party of insulting President Murmu and demanding that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi should apologise to the nation. In his defence, Chowdhury, who is the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, said he never intended to disrespect the President and his “rashtrapatni” remark was a “slip of the tongue”. He accused the BJP of making a “mountain out of a molehill” over the issue.
“Yesterday, when we were holding a protest at Vijay Chowk, journalists asked where we wanted to go. I said ‘rashtrapatni’ only once by mistake. I urged the journalists not to show my video where I committed a mistake. The BJP is creating a row over it now,” he said. “What should I do? I said it and realised I uttered the wrong word. I even looked for media persons to whom I had said this to request them to not focus on it. However, I couldn’t find them,” he added, a day after the remark.
While Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman called Chowdhury’s remark a “sexist insult”, another Union Minister Smriti Irani slammed the Congress for insulting President Mumru, saying the party continues to “demean” the women in constitutional posts, and demanded an apology.
“The Congress leader has disrespected the President. The Congress could not tolerate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a poor tribal woman a Presidential candidate,” Irani said in Lok Sabha. “Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s remark is anti-Adivasi, anti-poor and anti-woman,” she claimed.
BJP’s Amit Malviya said that the characterisation was “not just sexist but reeks of disdain for a Tribal woman, who has risen from a modest background, to the highest office of land”.
In other news, the Union government on Wednesday said the suspension of Opposition MPs can be revoked by the Chair if they apologise and assure they would not show placards in the House.
As many as 24 opposition MPs, 20 from the Rajya Sabha and four from the Lok Sabha, have been suspended for their unruly behaviour and creating ruckus in Parliament.
The 20 MPs, suspended over the last two days, include seven from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), six from the DMK, three from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), two from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and one each from the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
They began a 50-hour-long protest inside the Parliament complex on Wednesday and stayed through the night.
Both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha witnessed repeated adjournments, following uproar by Opposition MPs over the suspension of the 24 MPs among other issues such as price rise, GST hikes, and inflation.
(with inputs from PTI)
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