A doctored clip of Anurag Thakur's remarks, wherein he asked opposition how many pages were there in the Constitution, appeared to suggest Rahul Gandhi failed to answer the question, however, the Congress leader was not present in the House at the time of the BJP leader's speech.
A video of former Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Anurag Thakur challenging Opposition, which conducted its entire Lok Sabha elections campaign carrying copies of the Indian Constitution, to answer how many pages are there in the Constitution, saying that they did not even bother to read it but waves it around.
Among the most prominent faces of Opposition who carried a copy of the Constitution during the Lok Sabha election campaigns was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. He, along with the other MPs belonging to the opposition bloc INDIA, even entered Parliament carrying constitution when the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha began on June 24.
Launching an attack over the same, BJP MP Anurag Thakur on Monday said: "How many pages are there in the Constitution? How many?" Don't say it is "this" fat, Anurag Thakur said while making a gesture with his fingers.
The video of Anurag Thakur's remarks has been widely shared on social media, with some BJP supporters seeing it as a great comeback to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition. A doctored clip of Anurag Thakur's remarks appeared to suggest Rahul Gandhi failed to answer the question, however, the Congress leader was not present in the House at the time of the BJP leader's speech.
"Tell me how many pages are there? You have been roaming around with you every day. Haven't you bothered to read it once? You do not read but wave it around. Take it out of your pockets and see," Thakur said in the Lok Sabha on Monday during his speech on the Motion of Thanks on President's Address.
Hitting out at the Congress for claiming to protect the Constitution, Thakur said that the party has been acting against both the Constitution as well as "secularism".
"The Constitution is being tossed around like the word secularism, devaluation and demeaning it, that too by a party who has forever been acting against the ethos of both the words," Thakur said.
The former Union Minister also said the Congress has never been able to win as many seats as the BJP in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
"When the President said that a stable majority has been attained, they [Congress] created a lot of unrest. When you formed the government in 2004 and 2009 did you get 240 seats? You were not even close. You got only 145 seats...," he said.
Thakur also took on the Congress for contesting only in a limited number of seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
"The country's oldest political party had only contested in 60 per cent of seats, in 328 seats. And even among them, they lost in 70 per cent of the seats. When a party sets its standard so low and perform below average, they feel that it is overwhelming," he said.