A day after Opposition parties’ floor leaders in Parliament flooded Speaker Om Birla with letters supporting Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Danish Ali’s demand that BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri’s communal slurs against him be referred to the privileges committee, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey in turn wrote to the Speaker, asking that the “unsavoury conduct” of Mr. Ali also be probed.
Apart from accusing Mr. Ali of keeping up a “running commentary” while Mr. Bidhuri was making his speech during a discussion on India’s Chandrayaan-III mission, Mr. Dubey alleged that that the BSP MP made a “highly objectionable and blasphemous” remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘Fell into a trap’
It was more than enough for “any patriotic public representative to lose his calm and fall into his trap by uttering unsavoury words”, Mr. Dubey claimed. In his letter, he added that Trinamool Congress and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MPs had also made comments about the faith of another community.
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“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.
Mr. Dubey was, however, categorical in condemning Mr. Bidhuri’s comments, saying that no decent society could justify them adding that they could not be condemned enough.
‘False narrative’
In an apparent reaction to Mr. Dubey’s claims, Mr. Ali wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that some BJP leaders were pushing a narrative that he had instigated Mr. Bidhuri.
“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,” Mr. Ali said, posting a short video of Mr. Bidhuri citing the derogatory words used by opponents against the Prime Minister before abusing the BSP member.
