Congress insulted Sikhs by calling Sikh MP traitor: PM Modi in Rajya Sabha

A day after Congress MPs prevented him from replying to a debate on the motion of thanks on President's address in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday targeted the opposition party for calling minister Ravneet Bittu a traitor.

Replying to the debate on President’s address in Rajya Sabha, Modi recalled Wednesday's episode where Rahul Gandhi addressed Bittu as "my traitor friend", saying, "Yesterday, the Congress called a Sikh MP traitor. This is an insult of Sikhs and of the Sikh gurus. This is a reflection of the Congress’s hate for Sikhs. They have no regrets. This was no small word. The country won't tolerate a Sikh whose family made sacrifices for the nation being called a traitor only because he decided to change his political ideology," Modi said, adding that some people in the Congress will drown the party.

While referring to the incident where some women MPs of the Congress blocked his seat leading to deferment of his reply in the House, the PM said, "The Lok Sabha episode was extremely painful."

"It was an insult to the President, the Constitution, to the tribals of India and to women," he said, lamenting the disruption in his reply to the address President Droupadi Murmu gave to a joint sitting of both Houses on February 28.

The PM said that for the Congress all Indian citizens are problems.

"For us, all citizens are solutions," the PM said citing a speech where late Indira Gandhi is quoting her father Jawaharlal Nehru as saying that he had 35 crore challenges.

"At that time this was the population of India. Indira Gandhi went on to say that she had 57 crore problems, the population of India in her time," Modi said, adding that the Congress MPs by preventing his reply in Lok Sabha insulted an Andhra Pradesh Dalit leader who was in the presiding officer's chair at the time and also insulted the northeast because a senior Assam MP was also presiding when the ruckus in the house was on.