‘If you provoke us, we’re like fire’: Mallikarjun Kharge targets Shah over Ambedkar remarks row

Kharge said, “You have to teach him a lesson. I demanded his resignation… Shah should apologise for his comments.” He also highlighted the protests held across Karnataka over the past month condemning the remarks made by the home minister in Parliament.

Kharge criticised the BJP for blaming the Congress for Ambedkar’s election defeat. “If you provoke us, we are like fire. You will get burnt. You cannot survive,” he said.

Gandhi said that Shah’s remark was an insult to democracy. “Many governments have come and gone… But till now there has been no other government whose home minister has insulted Dr Ambedkar standing inside Parliament,” she said.

Gandhi attributed such remarks by BJP leaders to the party’s roots in an ideology “that insulted the Constitution and held a campaign against it”. The Congress leader alleged that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah were against the Constitution. The BJP’s ideology attacks the ideals on which the country was built, she further said.

Holding a copy of the Constitution, Gandhi accused the BJP government of relentlessly attacking it. She said Rahul Gandhi’s efforts to preserve the constitutional ideals were met with multiple complaints filed against him in BJP-ruled states.

The convention was initially scheduled for December 27 last year but postponed following the demise of former prime minister Manmohan Singh. Although Rahul Gandhi was slated to address the event, he did not attend owing to ill health.

Earlier in the day, Kharge inaugurated a statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the Suvarna Soudha premises on the outskirts of Belagavi.