Tejashwi Yadav questions PM Modi's tears over mother abuse row, recalls remarks against Sonia Gandhi

No one's mother should be abused, and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have hurled abuses against women related to Opposition leaders, said Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, reacting for the first time on the massive row over alleged abusive slogans raised against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Prime Minister Modi had reacted emotionally to the alleged slur against his mother, saying the incident was painful for him as a son.

Reacting to the whole controversy, Yadav told presspersons, "No one's mother should be abused. We are not in favour of this; it's not in our culture." Yadav slammed the bandh call given by the BJP leaders in Bihar over the alleged abuse against Modi's mother. Calling Modi's emotional outburst as "double standards", Yadav accused the BJP-led NDA of practising "impure and insincere politics".

"They are in power and yet they are calling a bandh", Yadav remarked sarcastically. Accusing Modi of double standards, Yadav said, "After that unfortunate incident, the prime minister had gone abroad. We have seen pictures and photos of him smiling and laughing with foreign dignitaries. But as soon as he returned home, he decided it was time to weep."

Questioning indecent remarks made against women leaders in the Opposition,  he said, "Where were the PM's sensibilities while making vulgar jibes like a girlfriend worth Rs 50 crore? He had also said so many deplorable things about Sonia Gandhi and made a below-the-belt remark on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's DNA. His party MLAs have hurled choicest abuses at me and my party colleagues on the floor of the assembly."

Saying nobody condones the insult to anybody's mother, Yadav added, "BJP has a lot to answer for the issue of crude behaviour in public."

Yadav, along with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, took out the Vote Adhikar Yatra in poll-bound Bihar, accusing the BJP and Election Commission of working together and manipulating electoral rolls for election gains.

The women's wings of NDA constituents have called for a five-hour bandh in Bihar on September 4 to protest against the alleged abuse hurled at Modi's late mother. Allegedly, abuses were screamed into the microphone from a podium on the outskirts of Darbhanga, on a day the Yatra had passed through the north Bihar town. The accused, a 25-year-old local resident, has been arrested. The Congress-led INDIA bloc maintained that he was not a member of any of the constituent parties.