House erupts over ‘infiltrator’ jibe

New Delhi: Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury’s remarks calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah as “infiltrators” created a ruckus in the Lok Sabha on Monday with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members demanding his apology, saying they would not tolerate such an insult.

The attack from the treasury benches was led by parliamentary affairs minister Prahlad Joshi who took a swipe at the Congress Party over its president Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin by dubbing her an infiltrator.

While speaking on the controversial National Register of Citizens issue, Mr Chowdhury is understood to have made the infiltrator barb at the BJP bigwigs.

In the House on Monday, he sought to explain his remarks and said he would apologise if the BJP was not satisfied with his response.

He used the opportunity to underline his opposition to the NRC, saying his family had come from Bangladesh. “We do not have many documents so if somebody calls (us) infiltrators, we cannot do much”.

However, as BJP MPs refused to accept his explanation and continued with their protest, Speaker Om Birla adjourned the House.

Mr Joshi said Mr Chaudhary’s remarks were an “outright insult” to people who had given Mr Modi a mandate in the recent Lok Sabha elections and it showed that the Congress wass still not able to come to terms with its defeat.

Rajasthan MP Arjun Ram Meghwal said: “You will have to apologise”.

Some BJP members also accused Mr Chowdhury of running a “syndicate” in West Bengal to help Bangladeshi infiltrators become Indian citizens.