Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai on Thursday demanded that Dinesh Pratap Singh be removed from his ministerial post for his remarks against Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
BJP's Dinesh Pratap Singh had taken to X on Wednesday to post “The girl could not fight and ran away to where she will not have to fight. She has become old”.
This was a jibe at Vadra’s ‘Ladki hoon lad sakti hoon’ (I am a girl, I can fight) campaign slogan which the party had given in the last Vidhan Sabha elections in which it fielded a record number of women candidates. The current reference was Vadra’s bypoll candidature from Kerala's Wayanad -- a Congress-IUML bastion.
Singh, who is minister of state for horticulture in the Yogi Adityanath government had lost the election from Rae Bareli to Rahul Gandhi earlier this year.
On Wednesday, Congress workers had painted black Singh’s nameplate at his official residence in Lucknow and had also scrawled the word ‘Beiman’ (dishonest) on the gate.
Ajay Rai today said that Singh was deeply enmeshed in corruption and was making such statements only to endear himself to the party leadership.
“Narendra Modi talks of beti bachao, beti padhao, Yogi Adityanath talks of zero tolerance towards crimes against woman and a minister makes such cheap remarks”, Rai said.
Singh though kept at it on X even today. He posted a clip of Vadra from the election trail in which she is telling a crowd that she is now ‘buzurg’ (old).
He posted, ‘Priyanka Gandhi ji tell your state president how a word you have used for yourself is disrespectful’.
Rai said that his party was demanding Singh’s ouster from the ministry.
“He lost the election by a huge margin and is now making cheap remarks”, Rai said.
Congress organisational general secretary Anil Yadav, the one who painted over Singh’s nameplate, said that the party was demanding an apology from Singh.