Watch: Parliament Winter Session | Constitution at the crosshairs again

Watch: Parliament Winter Session | Constitution at the crosshairs again

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday accused the Congress of twisting and distorting his comments in the Rajya Sabha with regard to Constitution framer Bhimrao Ambedkar, attributing it to “the way that the BJP had exposed how the Congress was anti-Ambedkar, anti-Constitution and anti-reservation.”

Addressing a press conference at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national headquarters in New Delhi, Mr. Shah, flanked by his Cabinet colleagues J. P. Nadda, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju, Information and Broadcasting Minister Aswini Vaishnaw and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, said that the BJP will look into the possibility of exploring legal options both inside and outside Parliament against the Congress for twisting his statement.

The controversy surrounding Mr. Shah’s comments on Ambedkar is significant as the Opposition had, during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, run a campaign stating that the BJP’s political slogan of asking for more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha had been to ensure radical changes in the Constitution, including ending reservations. The BJP ended with a sub-par performance of 240 seats, 32 seats short of a majority, and has attributed much of this loss to the Opposition’s campaign. The Haryana and Maharashtra poll results may have quietened that particular narrative but the speed at which the entire government, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, moved to quell the controversy shows that it is a wound that runs deep.