Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey on Saturday accused Bahujan Samaj Party’s Danish Ali of making “highly objectionable and derogatory” remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, two days after his colleague Ramesh Bidhuri launched a communal tirade against the Muslim legislator in Parliament.
During a debate on the success of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission in the Lok Sabha on Thursday night, Bidhuri called Ali “mullah terrorist”, “pimp” and “katwa”, a slur used for circumcised Muslims.
BJP MPs and former ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Harsh Vardhan spontaneously grinned and guffawed at Bidhuri’s tirade.
Several Opposition MPs criticised the BJP MP from South Delhi, saying that his remarks amount to hate speech.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla warned Bidhuri of strict action if he repeated such behaviour. The BJP also reportedly served a show cause notice to Bidhuri, asking him to explain his remarks.
On Saturday, Dubey in a letter to Birla alleged that Ali’s remarks about the prime minister instigated Bidhuri to use blatantly communal slurs in Parliament.
“[The] statement made by Danish Ali, I think, was more than enough for any patriotic public representative to lose his calm and it led to Bidhuri responding to him like he did,” Dubey wrote. “It is also very unfortunate that the entire media has also not gone into these minute pre-mortem details, wherein Danish Ali made such disgraceful and demeaning comments against our honourable prime minister.”
He also alleged that MPs of the Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had also made comments about Hindus.
“I, therefore, request you to constitute an ‘Inquiry Committee’ to investigate the utterances made by various members during the said discussion and also to inquire the extent of culpability of various other members of Parliament in instigating our citizens by way of their comments made in the House,” he wrote to the Speaker.
Dubey, however, added that he condemns the remarks made by Bidhuri, saying that no decent society could justify such behaviour.
On his part, Ali denied the allegations and said that some BJP leaders were pushing a narrative.
“Truth is that I tried to protect the prime minister’s dignity and urged the Chair to expunge from the House’s records highly objectionable words used about Modi ji,” Ali said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
He also said that the Speaker should investigate the claims made by Dubey.
“If what Nishikant Dubey is saying is true, there must be a video of the same?” Ali asked, according to ANI. “If it is true then all the BJP MPs were sitting and laughing there? This means that they did not come in support of the PM [Modi].”
Congress chief whip in Lok Sabha K Suresh, who was presiding over the proceedings on Thursday, sought stringent punishment against Bidhuri, reported PTI.
“Since the translation services were not optimal and the House was erupting in protest, I could not make out the exact meaning of the utterances of Ramesh Bidhuri, but sensing the situation, I immediately ordered for the expunging of all terms, usages and expletives from the record that were spoken by Ramesh Bidhuri, and ensured the hate-filled remarks are permanently expunged and removed,” he said.
Suresh, a Kerala Congress leader, added that he is utterly shocked and absolutely repulsed at the fact that a ruling party MP could “openly make such heinous comments” about a fellow member’s religion and threaten him with assault outside the parliament precincts, according to PTI.
Also read: Ramesh Bidhuri and the descent of India
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