Renuka Chowdhury plans case against PM Modi over ‘Surpanakha’ comment
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New Delhi: Congress leader and former Union Minister Renuka Chowdhury has reminded Parliament of an incident that occurred in 2018, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi equated her with a character in Ramayana.
Following Rahul Gandhi's conviction and disqualification from the Lok Sabha by the Surat court, she has announced her plan to file a case against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
She shared a video of the incident on Twitter, in which PM Modi can be heard saying that Chowdhury's laughter reminded him of a character from the 1980s TV serial based on the Ramayana.
“This classless megalomaniac referred to me as Surpanakha on the floor of the house. I will file a defamation case against him. Let’s see how fast courts will act now,” her tweet reads.
It was Chowdhury's laugh at the point in time when PM Modi was speaking about the Aadhaar scheme in the Rajya Sabha, where he hailed L K Advani for conceptualizing the Aadhaar, that prompted Modi to utter those words against her.
The Congress strongly criticized Modi's comments, describing them as "distasteful" and "sexist". The Mahila Congress demanded an apology from the Prime Minister, while Anand Sharma, a Congress leader, stated that Modi had crossed the line of political discourse with his language and "outrageous" reference.
Sushmita Dev, the former chief of the Mahila Congress, expressed her shock at the Prime Minister's "utterly sexist and downright distasteful" comment against an honorable Member of Parliament.
In contrast, the BJP rallied against Chowdhury, with then Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani stating that it was inappropriate to use gender as a shield to hide ill-mannered behavior and that no woman would accept it.
