India News | Kharge Slams Shah for Ambedkar Remarks, Demand His Sacking from Cabinet
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. Stepping up his attack on Amit Shah over his remarks on B R Ambedkar, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday said if Prime Minister Narendra Modi has any respect left for Babasaheb he should sack the home minister in case he does not quit on his own.
New Delhi, Dec 18 (PTI) Stepping up his attack on Amit Shah over his remarks on B R Ambedkar, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday said if Prime Minister Narendra Modi has any respect left for Babasaheb he should sack the home minister in case he does not quit on his own.
Accusing Shah of disrespecting the architect of the Constitution, Kharge said the home minister should apologise to the nation for the "insult" he caused to Ambedkar during his speech in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
He also warned that if Shah is not removed from the Cabinet, people will take to the street. They are ready to give up their lives for Babasaheb, he said.
Replying to a debate in Rajya Sabha on 75 years of the Constitution, Home Minister Shah Tuesday slammed the Congress for making it a "fashion" to take Ambedkar's name for "voter bank politics", triggering criticism by the Congress and other opposition parties.
At a press conference here on Wednesday, Kharge said a person becomes a minister by taking oath of the Constitution and if he insults it, he has no right to remain in the Cabinet.
"We want that Amit Shah quit his post and if he doesn't, I want to tell the prime minister that if he has even little respect for Babasaheb, he should dismiss Amit Shah from his post before this midnight," he said.
"If there is no resignation, there will be protests all over the country. Babasaheb Ambedkar ji belongs to everyone because he used to talk about every person of society including Dalits, the oppressed and the deprived. He had sympathy for everyone," he said.
The Congress chief said that all parties raised their issues during the debate on the Constitution in both houses.
"What Amit Shah ji said in Parliament was extremely condemnable and unfortunate. He has insulted a Dalit hero who is revered by all. He taunted opposition parties on Ambedkar.
A person who spoke "so insultingly" about Ambedkar ji should have been removed from the cabinet, Kharge said.
"I am compelled to say that these people do not respect the Constitution. When they talk of heaven and hell, they talk with a mindset of Manusmriti, as such things are written there. Their gurus and other founders spoke like this. It is not their fault, but the school they come from," the Congress chief said.
He said that during the two-day debate on the Constitution, BJP MPs tried to show the Congress and the Gandhi-Nehru family in bad light.
Kharge also criticised the prime minister over Shah's remarks, saying that rather than telling the home minister that his statement was wrong, Modi made a series of posts on X to support him.
But then PM Modi and Home Minister Shah are close friends and they hide each other's "sins", the Congress chief said.
The BJP-RSS and their leaders in the past never respected the Constitution, he claimed.
"They never accepted the Constitution, they burnt its copies. These people did not even adopt the tricolour. They had stated that the Constitution does not have the words of Manusmriti, so they will not accept it. In protest against this, they also burnt the effigies of Nehru and Ambedkar," he claimed.
If BJP and its leaders had respect for Ambedkar, they would never have said such things, Kharge said.
Criticising the Congress for repeatedly taking the name of B R Ambedkar, Shah had said in his remarks on Tuesday that had they taken God's name so many times they could have earned a place in heaven.
"Abhi ek fashion ho gaya hai - Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. Itna naam agar bhagwan ka lete to saat janmon tak swarg mil jata (It has become a fashion to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar'. If they had taken God's name so many times, they would have got a place in heaven)," Shah had said.
He also said the BJP is happy that the Congress is taking Ambedkar's name but the party should also speak about its real sentiments towards him.
The home minister pointed out how Ambedkar had to resign from the first Cabinet citing his disagreement with the then Congress-led government's policies including Article 370.
The home minister also said most of the memorials of Ambedkar were built when the BJP came to power.
"How appropriate is it for you to use the name of a person for vote bank politics whom you used to oppose?" Shah had asked Kharge.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)