New Delhi: After HRD Minister Smriti Irani took the Parliament by storm with her fiery speech, rumours are rife that the BJP high command is not quite impressed with her 'melodramatic' show, report claimed on Sunday.
As per a report in Asian Age, the high command not only cautioned Irani to refrain from getting into ' 'melodramatic mode', but pressed finance minister Arun Jaitley to intervene the following day in the Rajya Sabha to bring a semblance of balance to the JNU debate.
That she was cautioned became somewhat evident when during her comparatively controlled reply in the Rajya Sabha she said, “I have been cautioned, and rightly so...,” the Asian Age reported.
The report further states that her speech did not go down well with some of the BJP's OBC leaders who opposed her raising the “Mahishasura martyrdom” and “goddess Durga” issue. It was also told to the high command that in some communities Mahishasura was “not considered evil”.
Irani may face further trouble as Janata Dal (United) MP KC Tyagi, nominated MP KTS Tulsi and CPI (M) lawmaker Mohammad Salim will on Monday give privilege notice against her in Rajya Sabha over Rohith Vemula suicide case.
Irani's remarks about goddess Durga in the Rajya Sabha generated much political heat in the upper house on Friday as well, with the opposition demanding an apology from her and she rejecting it.
As the upper house met for the day's business, the opposition members were on their feet demanding Irani's apology for reading out in the house on Thursday what they said were "blasphemous" comments about the goddess from a pamphlet allegedly written and distributed by some Jawaharlal Nehru University students.
Furthermore, the student organiser of the Mahishasura event in JNU, Anil Kumar on Friday accused Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani of "lying" and "denied" that the statement she quoted from in Parliament was not "released" by him or his colleagues.
"The pamphlet that Smriti Irani was reading in Parliament on Wednesday was not written by me or any of my mates. The pamphlet she is seen holding in the speech is a colourful one which is never used in any JNU protest due to high printing costs. It is a fake document and the minister is lying," said Anil Kumar, who was a PhD student at the varsity when the event took place in 2014.
Also, BJP MP Udit Raj was caught in the wrong foot when images of him addressing the same event in 2013 surfaced.
(With Agency inputs)
