Digvijaya Singh slams Anurag Thakur's ‘badtameezi’: ‘Not expected of PM Modi to…’

The Congress party has trained guns at the ruling BJP over its MP Anurag Thakur's apparent questioning of Rahul Gandhi's caste.

Updated on: Jul 31, 2024, 12:00:14 IST

By HT News Desk

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Former Union minister and BJP MP Anurag Thakur kicked up a storm in Parliament on Tuesday by apparently taking a ‘caste’ swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi (R) and BJP MP Anurag Thakur in the House during the Monsoon session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (PTI)

Veteran Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh described Thakur's remarks as “badtameezi” and hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for endorsing his speech.

“'Badtameezi hai', this was not expected of him and it was not expected of PM to support him,” Singh told reporters.

Anurag Thakur was questioning the Congress' stand on caste census during a discussion on the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha when the BJP MP's apparent reference to Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi's caste triggered an ugly spat between the opposition and treasury benches.

Read: 'Rahul Gandhi's family's caste is...': Congress's reaction to Anurag Thakur's remark

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav described Thakur's remarks as inappropriate and said, “How can you ask anybody's caste?”

Jagdambika Pal, who was in the chair, said Thakur's remarks on caste stand expunged. He said nobody in the House was allowed to ask the caste of any person.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said his party is ready to listen to any casteist abuse, but it is determined to get a caste census done.

"Yes, I am an Indian and a Dalit, but I don't know how many we are. Yes, I am a tribal, but I don't know how many we are. Yes, I am an OBC, but I don't know how many we are. Today, we all need to assess how much our participation is in the progress of this country.

"The BJP-RSS people are conspiring to hide this from us, so that they can keep us backward and take over our rights by snatching reservation through conspiracies," Kharge said in a post in Hindi on X.

Congress MP Karti Chidambaram called Thakur's comments "distasteful" saying “this kind of crude behaviour has no place in our public discourse.”

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HT News Desk
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