A couple of days after BJP leader Smriti Irani slammed the Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury for disrespecting the newly elected President Draupadi Murmu, Chowdhury tried to turn the table on Friday and wrote to the Lok Sabha Speaker pushing allegations against Irani. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in the letter alleged that Minister Smriti Irani had yelled the name of President Droupadi Murmu without using any prefix like Madame or Smt during her address in the House.
He said that the BJP leader had degraded the stature of the highest office. “The manner in which Smt. Smriti Irani was taking the name of Hon’ble Madam President in the House was not proper and in consonance with the status and position of the Hon’ble President. She was yelling ‘Droupadi Murmu’ repeatedly without prefixing Hon’ble President or Madame or Smt. before the Hon’ble President’s name”, the letter read.
“This clearly amounts to degrading the stature of the office of the Hon’ble President. Therefore, I demand that the way Smt. Smriti Irani was addressing the Hon’ble President may be expunged from the proceedings of the House”, Chowdhury who earlier had denied to apologize for his statement wrote in a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
“There is no question of apologising. I had mistakenly said ‘Rashtrapatni’, now if you want to hang me for it, then you can…the ruling party in a deliberate design trying to make mountain out of a molehill,” says Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury on his ‘Rashtrapatni’ remark pic.twitter.com/PglyMbdxHB
— ANI (@ANI) July 28, 2022
Meanwhile, referring to the issue (Rashtrapatni comment) that sparked BJP demonstrations in the Parliament complex, Chowdhury, who had called the event a “slip of the tongue,” stated that the blunder occurred because he is not fluent in Hindi. “I regret to say that this controversy erupted because of a mere slip of the tongue on my part. This error occurred because my mother tongue is Bengali and I am not well versed in Hindi. It is really very sad that Madam Rashtrapati Ji’s name is being unnecessarily dragged to gain cheap publicity and political one-upmanship by the ruling party,” he wrote.
Smriti Irani on July 28 led the protest in the Lok Sabha against Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Sonia Gandhi over the ‘Rashtrapatni’ remark. Smriti Irani also slammed Congress and demanded an apology for maliciously targeting President Droupadi Murmu and said that the country knows that the opposition party is anti-tribal, anti-Dalit, and anti-women.
Smriti Irani tears into Congress party for humiliating the First Tribal President of India by calling her “Rashtrapatni”. pic.twitter.com/wjrGNR1TUe
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) July 28, 2022
During the protest, a war of words also broke between Smriti Irani and Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi when the latter outraged at Irani and said, ‘You don’t talk to me’. Amid the protest, Sonia Gandhi who was present in the house approached the protesting BJP MP Rama Devi and asked ‘What is my fault? Why is my name being dragged in this?”. Seeing this, Smriti Irani intervened to know what was the matter that was being discussed when Sonia Gandhi outraged and said, “you don’t talk to me”.
Later Rama Devi talked to the media and said that Gandhi’s fault was that she had selected Chowdhury as the Congress leader in the Lok Sabha. further said that Sonia Gandhi had delivered her statement in anger, which she should not have spoken. “She should have asked Congress’ leader instead that how he dared call the President as ‘Rashtrapatni’, that too not once but twice”. She also cleared that Smriti Irani was not angry, but Sonia Gandhi was angry and walked out of the Parliament but then returned.
