NEW DELHI: In a change of tactics, BJP now plays the caste and woman card in the Sadhvi Niranjan expletive case even as it accuses Congress and other Opposition parties of being authoritarian and disrespecting parliamentary norms.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to persuade the Opposition despite making a statement in both Houses, senior Cabinet Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and BJP minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi charged the Opposition MPs of being insensitive to an woman who hails from backward caste.
Earlier, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu had said the matter should be put to rest after an apology by Sadhvi Niranjan, a first time MP and from a humble background.
Modi had also urged all parties to end the matter and treat the incident as a lesson on their conduct. But Congress, TMC and other parties insisted the minister had violated Constitutional norms and must go. Even a section of Opposition demands legal action against her. The Sadhvi had used abuses against non-Hindus in a public meeting in Delhi last week.
BJP forgets own conduct
Meanwhile, BJP leaders chose to forget their own conduct in 2012 when they had stalled both Houses following allegations of irregularities in allocation of coal blocks.
After the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned Opposition for not allowing the Parliament to function, then Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj had shot back, saying: “I would like to remind the prime minister, when he was leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha, they had stalled parliament over the Tehelka issue. Even over the coffin scam, they stalled parliament and called us coffin theives.”
“Not allowing parliament to function is also a form of democracy like any other form,” Swaraj had added.
Backing her, BJP leader Arun Jaitley had called the irregularities in the allocation a “textbook case of crony capitalism.”
Opposition demand meaningless: Venkaiah Naidu
Earlier, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiha Naidu had ruled out resignation of Sadhvi Niranajan, saying, “question does not arise at all. There is no question of the minister resigning at all.”
Naidu referred to the controversial remarks by former Union Minister Beni Prasad Varma against SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and former PM A B Vajpayee which made the then PM Manmohan Singh to apologise in the House as Varma had refused to do so.
