First-time MP from Balasore in Odisha Pratap Chandra Sarangi in his address to the parliament on Monday asked whether those who refused to say “Vande Mataram” had a right to live in the country.
“What is the religion of tukde tukde gang?” he asked. “People who say ‘Bharat ke tukde tukde karne tak jung rahegi’, and ‘Pakistan zindabad, Afzal Guru zindabad’, do they have the right to live in this country? Who supports these people? Introspect now,” he said, in an apparent dig at the opposition.
Sarangi’s remark comes days after Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq refused to say “Vande Mataram” during his oath-taking ceremony last week, arguing that it was “against Islam”.
Sarangi, who is also the Minister of State for MSME and Animal Husbandry was fielded by the NDA to table the motion of thanks to President Ram Nath Kovind’s address to the joint session of Parliament.
In a multilingual speech rousing much brouhaha from his fellow BJP MPs, Sarangi – who is popularly known as the “Modi of Odisha” – likened Narendra Modi to Swami Vivekananda. “There was one Vivekananda whose earlier name was Narendra and now, our Narendra Modi, who has come from a humble background and risen through the ranks to become PM,” Sarangi said.
Sarangi also heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and claimed that the people had reposed their faith in the PM on the grounds of “pro-incumbency” before slamming the UPA government’s tenure as one of misrule, governance failure and policy paralysis and taunting the Congress over transgressions committed during the Emergency.
