The Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday condemned the comments made by Congress leaders regarding President Droupadi Murmu’s address to Parliament, stating that such remarks undermined the dignity of the office of the President and were therefore unacceptable.
The President’s office suggested that the Congress leaders may have misunderstood the speech due to unfamiliarity with the “idiom and discourse in Indian languages such as Hindi,” which led to their misinterpretation. It added, “In any case, such comments are in poor taste, unfortunate and entirely avoidable.”
The remarks came shortly after President Murmu concluded her address to the joint session of Parliament, during which Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were seen discussing the speech. In a video circulating on social media, Sonia Gandhi was heard saying, “The poor lady, the President, was getting very tired by the end…she could hardly speak poor thing.”
The Rashtrapati Bhavan responded, saying, “While reacting to the media on the President’s Address to the Parliament, some prominent leaders of the Congress party have made comments that clearly hurt the dignity of the high office, and therefore are unacceptable.” It continued, “These leaders have said that the President was getting ‘very tired’ by the end and she could hardly speak.”
The statement from the President’s office further clarified, “Rashtrapati Bhavan would like to clarify that nothing could be farther from the truth. The President was not tired at any point. Indeed, she has believed that speaking up for the marginalised communities, for women and farmers, as she was doing during the course of her address, can never be tiring.”
Meanwhile, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also spoke on President Droupadi Murmu’s address, calling it “very predictable” and lacking in surprises. “It’s her job to praise her own government, and she did that. But what we are concerned about is what was omitted from her speech—the things the government has failed to accomplish, and the areas where the government is not performing well,” Tharoor said.
He also highlighted issues facing the country, saying, “The situation of the economy today… the fact that the aam aadmi, the middle class, are hurting. The fact that unemployment is so high, even educated youth don’t have jobs. There was no acknowledgement in the President’s speech about what the ordinary citizen of India is experiencing every day.”