Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury will apologise to President for ‘rashtrapatni’ remark

The BJP Thursday criticised the Congress for “demeaning the women and tribals of India” after Opposition leader and Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury referred to President Droupadi Murmu as ‘Rashtrapatni.’

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury Thursday said he accepts his mistake of referring to President Droupadi Murmu as ‘rashtrapatni’ and said that he will apologise to the President. While accepting his mistake, he further stated that he is a Bengali and is not used to Hindi. Saying that he has sough time from the President, Chowdhury, however, hit out at those criticising him saying he will not apologise to these ‘pakhandis’ (hypocrites).

This comes as the BJP Thursday criticised the Congress for “demeaning the women and tribals of India” after Opposition leader and Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury referred to President Droupadi Murmu as ‘Rashtrapatni.’ “You stand guilty of insulting the supreme commander of armed forces, you stand guilty of humiliating a tribal leader…The Congress party cannot stand the honour given to a tribal, it is not able to digest a poor tribal woman becoming the President of India,” Irani said in the Lok Sabha even as BJP MPs protested on the floor of the House. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also spoke in the Rajya Sabha asking him to apologise for his remark on the President. Reacting to the BJP’s charge, while Chowdhury said “there is no question of apologising”, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that Ranjan had already apologised.

Three more Rajya Sabha MPs from Opposition parties, including Aam Aadmi Party’s Sandeep Kumar Pathak and Sushil Kumar Gupta and independent member Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, were suspended Thursday for the rest of this week for “unruly behaviour”, taking the total number of suspended MPs in Parliament to 27.