BJP leaders and workers today staged a protest outside the Congress headquarters here demanding an apology from the opposition party over its MLA Virji Thummar's "indecent" comments against BJP Gujarat unit president Jitu Vaghani's mother.
Thummar had allegedly told a gathering of Patidar community at Moti Malvan village in Surendranagar district yesterday that Jitu Vaghani, a Patidar, was not born from "womb of a Patidar."
He had reportedly said the language used by Vaghani in response to an invitation extended by Hardik Patel-led PAAS (Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti) to the BJP MLAs to attend the event showed that Vaghani's "mother was not a Patidar".
BJP leaders and workers demanded that Thummar be removed from the party over his speech.
Raising slogans like "Maafi maange, maafi maange, Congress maafi maange (Congress should apologise)", the saffron workers burnt an effigy of Thummar today amid heavy police bandobast.
"The Congress should apologise because its MLA (Thummar) resorted to cheap politics and used cheap words against our state party president and insulted his mother," said state vice-president I K Jadeja.
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani also sought an apology from the Congress.
"The Congress as well as Virjibhai (Thummar) both should apologise. This shows Congress' cheap mentality," he told reporters.
When contacted, Congress state unit president Amit Chavda said, "BJP workers themselves indulge in free use of such words...and now to hide their own mistakes, they are blaming others".
"(Thummar's) anger is natural as the members of the ruling party did not join a community event," he said while referring to the PAAS event.
"It's not proper to attack someone at personal level, but if it is a community event, then people's anger is evident," he said.
Addressing a gathering at the "Patidar Nyay Mahapanchayat" event, where Hardik called for revival of the reservation stir, Thummar had come down heavily on the BJP over none of its MLAs attending the programme despite invitation.
"BJP MLAs from Patidar community were also invited to the programme, but looking at the kind of words uttered by Vaghani, it appears your (Vaghani's) mother is not Patidar. You should not have used such words...Were you born from the womb of a Patidar?" he had said.
Several Congress MLAs had participated in the event.
Commenting on Hardik's "invitation-cum-warning", Vaghani had dubbed the quota leader a "pawn of Congress" and accused him of adopting such tactics to "remain in the limelight.
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