Khattar calls Sonia 'dead rat'

Sonipat/New Delhi : Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar ridiculed Sonia Gandhi's return as the Congress chief, using a Hindi proverb to seemingly call her a "dead mouse" and provoking the Opposition party to demand an apology.

Addressing a poll rally at Kharkhoda near Sonipat, Khattar mocked the Congress effort at finding a replacement for Rahul Gandhi as the Opposition party ended up picking someone from the Gandhi family again.

After three months who became the president? Sonia Gandhi. khoda pahad nikli chuiya, woh bhi mari hui. This is their condition," said Khattar.

The Congress expressed outrage over the mouse remark. "The chief minister's remarks are inappropriate, he stooped to the lowest level and it also shows the anti-women character of the BJP," the Congress tweeted.

On Monday, Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev and Haryana Congress president Kumari Selja slammed Khattar. The women's wing of Delhi Congress held a protest, burning Khattar's effigy.

Khattar had said the Congress took three months to look for a national president outside the Gandhi family after Rahul Gandhi announced his resignation.

Kumar Selja asked the chief minister to reflect "in what light remarks such as these portray women of Haryana and elsewhere." "It is because of the mindset of people like you that Haryana has come to be known as the crime capital, which tops the country in crime.

Crimes against women are on the rise," she said. Delhi Mahila Congress president Sharmistha Mukherjee called Khattar's remarks "disgraceful and shameful".

Slamming the BJP government over the economic slowdown, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday hit out at it for doing nothing to tackle rising unemployment and farmers' distress.

In his first campaign rally for the October 21 Haryana Assembly elections, the former Congress President, speaking in Muslim-dominated Marora in Nuh district, charged Prime Minister Narendra Modi with only working for the corporates, not the common man.

Gandhi said that the Prime Minister has been putting money into the pockets of few selected business groups, and "gave Rs 5.5 lakh crore to his selected 15-20 corporates".

To rejuvenate the economy, the government should put money back into the common man's pocket, he said, praising the party-led UPA government's flagship MNREGA programme for leading to a boom in the economy.

"The economy is in shambles and Modi is talking about the moon," he said.

Raising the issues of unemployment and farmers' distress, he asked the BJP why Maruti shut its factory and why Tata closed its units here, warning that in six months, the economy will reach in such a position that youth will stand up against Modi.