Row over Sonia Gandhi’s remark on President Murmu

Speaking up for the marginalized communities, for women and farmers can never be tiring: President’s office

The Rashtrapati Bhavan Press Secretary on Friday (January 31, 2025) reacted to the media reports of the former Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s reaction to President Droupadi Murmu’s address to both Houses of Parliament and called it “in poor taste, unfortunate and entirely avoidable”.

“The poor lady, the President, was getting very tired by the end...she could hardly speak poor thing,” Ms. Gandhi was purportedly heard saying in a video doing the rounds on social media.

Taking note of the video, Ajay Kumar Singh, Press Secretary to the President, said, “Rashtrapati Bhavan would like to clarify that nothing could be farther from the truth. The President was not tired at any point.”

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“She has believed that speaking up for the marginalized communities, for women and farmers, as she was doing during the course of her address, can never be tiring,”, the statement added.

The statement further added, “The President’s office believes it might be the case that these leaders have not acquainted themselves with the idiom and discourse in Indian languages such as Hindi, and thus formed a wrong impression.”

“In any case, such comments are in poor taste, unfortunate and entirely avoidable.”, the statement noted.

Latching on to the remark, BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said on X, “Sonia Gandhi referring to the President as a ‘poor thing’ demeans the high office and reflects her feudal mindset. This is not the first time the Congress has ridiculed the first tribal woman to hold the highest constitutional office in the country.” “Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition, who frequently flaunts a copy of the Constitution, has not even considered making a courtesy visit to the President,” he said.

The Congress has no regard for Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution, constitutional values, or those from socially marginalized backgrounds -- namely, Dalits, OBCs, and Tribals, he alleged.

Published - January 31, 2025 04:02 pm IST