Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharaman latch on Adhir Ranjan Choudhary’s unsavory jibe at President of India

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New Delhi: Since the last nine days or so Congress and other opposition parties have been staging protests in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. The kind of logjam seen in the Parliament was witnessed at a time when the Union Finance Minister should have ideally clarified the reasons behind the rising inflation, Goods and Service Tax (GST) on essential commodities etc. But since she was down with Covid-19 she could not come into the Parliament and reply. 

But the twist in the tale came when Adhir Ranjan Choudhary deliberately called President of India Droupadi Murmu as ‘Rashtrapatni’. The irony is such that even the dictionary does not accept the word ‘Rashtrapatni’ and then he goes on to say that he did not mean saying that and the utterances were a mistake. Neither me nor anybody else can accept that he said that mistakenly. But this is how Congress…No, their leaders create trouble for the leadership.

I personally feel that they deliberately say something that jeopardises the image of the grand old party. Adhir Ranjan Choudhary’s Rashtrapatni jibe was instead deliberate which provided enough ammunition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to attack the Congress. The BJP which is far more intelligent in capitalising on the issue did not miss the opportunity and fielded their firebrand leader Union Women &Child Development Minister Smriti Irani who ferociously attacked the Congress as a whole.

The words she used that Congress Leadership by which she means Sonia Gandhi & Rahul Gandhi sanctioned Adhir to make such a statement to insult the first citizen of the country is not at all surprising.

Smriti made the most of it the moment Lok Sabha proceedings began in the day leaving no stone unturned to slam Sonia Gandhi in the best possible way and leaving not only the Congress red faced but even derailing the protest of Opposition on important issue of inflation which is making the situation miserable for the middle class and poor people.

At the outset Smriti coming all guns blazing came as a planned strategy of the BJP top brass who wanted to puncture the Opposition protests. However, in this whole episode what startled the author of this column was the presence of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who was missing in action and did not turn up in Parliament as she was down with Covid-19.

But after Smriti’s acerbic tongue stinging the Congress, it was time to turn to the Rajya Sabha where Nirmala Sitharaman too tried to contribute in her own way to pin down the Congress. What further startles and forces me to ask one single question. Had the FM shown her presence, had it been a same day of protest by Congress-led opposition and not the “mistaken” jibe from Adhir Ranjan Choudhary?