Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi's reaction to President Droupadi Murmu's address to the Joint session of the Parliament on Friday stoked a controversy.
She said that the President 'could hardly speak, poor thing'.
"The President was getting very tired by the end...She could hardly speak, poor thing," Sonia Gandhi told reporters.
Responding to her remark, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said on Friday that the Congress leaders' comments on President Murmu's address to the Parliament clearly hurt the dignity of the high office and therefore are unacceptable.
The President's office said it believed it might be the case that these leaders were not acquainted with 'the idiom and discourse in Indian languages such as Hindi', and thus formed a wrong impression.
'In any case, such comments are in poor taste, unfortunate and entirely avoidable,' the President's office said in a statement.
Gandhi made the remarks soon after the President concluded her address to the joint sitting.
She was also seen discussing the speech with party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan said, '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.'
These leaders have said that the President was getting 'very tired' by the end and she could hardly speak, it said.
'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 marginalized communities, for women and farmers, as she was doing during the course of her address, can never be tiring,' it added.
Meanwhile, latching on to the remark, Bharatiya Janata Party IT department head Amit Malviya said on X, 'Sonia Gandhi referring to the President as a 'poor thing' demeans the high office and reflects her feudal mindset. This is not the first time the Congress has ridiculed the first tribal woman to hold the highest constitutional office in the country.'
'Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition, who frequently flaunts a copy of the Constitution, has not even considered making a courtesy visit to the President,' he said.
The Congress has no regard for Babasaheb Ambedkar's Constitution, constitutional values, or those from socially marginalized backgrounds -- namely, Dalits, OBCs, and Tribals, he alleged.
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