Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's "poor thing and very tired" remarks about President Droupadi Murmu after the latter's hour-long address to Parliament on Friday snowballed into a huge controversy, with the Rashtrapati Bhavan saying they were in "poor taste, unfortunate and unacceptable."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also tore into the Congress, accusing its 'shahi parivaar'(royal family) of insulting the President, who hails from a tribal background, and claiming that the party has always undermined the progress of those who come from marginalized communities.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan came out with a statement to say the remarks clearly hurt the dignity of the high office.
As several BJP leaders condemned Sonia Gandhi's remarks, party chief J P Nadda said they were "deeply disrespectful".
The Congress hit back and said every person in India has respect and empathy for President Murmu but claimed that the BJP leaders cannot digest Sonia Gandhi's "empathy" for her health.
Soon after the President concluded her customary address to a joint sitting of Parliament to mark the start of the Budget session, Sonia Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, also a party general secretary, were seen discussing the speech in the Parliament complex.
"The poor lady, the President, was getting very tired by the end... she could hardly speak, poor thing," Sonia Gandhi was heard saying in a video doing the rounds on social media.
During the discussion, Rahul Gandhi was also heard asking his mother if the President's speech was "boring".
The Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said it believes that "it might be the case that the Congress leaders were not acquainted with the idiom and discourse in Indian languages such as Hindi, and thus formed a wrong impression".
"In any case, such comments are in poor taste, unfortunate and entirely avoidable." In their reactions to the President’s address, some prominent leaders of the Congress party have made comments that clearly hurt the dignity of the high office, and therefore are unacceptable, the statement noted.
"These leaders have said that the President was getting very tired by the end and she could hardly speak. Rashtrapati Bhavan would like to clarify that nothing could be farther from the truth.
"The President was not tired at any point. Indeed, she has believed that speaking up for the marginalised communities, for women and farmers, as she was doing during the course of her address, can never be tiring," the statement said.
Latching onto Congress leaders' remarks about President Murmu, Modi said, "These Congress people think they are the masters of the country. The arrogance of the Congress' royal family has once again been exposed." "The royal family of Congress stooped to a new low. One member called her speech ‘boring’ and another went further, calling her 'poor' and 'tired'. This is an insult to 10 crore tribal brothers and sisters of this country. This is an insult to every poor person who rises from the ground," he told a public rally in Dwarka in poll-bound Delhi.
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