Cong hurt dignity of high office: Rashtrapati Bhavan

New Delhi: 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 said that the Congress leaders might 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.” It may be recalled that soon after the President concluded her address to the joint session, Sonia Gandhi in her reaction said, “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 her address, can never be tiring.”