New Delhi: Weighing in on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s “vulgar” statements on population control and women’s role in bringing down Bihar’s fertility rates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday said that the CM — “a prominent leader of the Opposition’s INDIA alliance” — had used “unimaginable language” in the Bihar Assembly where women were present.
Modi was speaking at a rally in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh’s Guna.
“He is not ashamed. It is not just that, none of the INDIA alliance leaders uttered one word against this insult to India’s mothers and daughters. Can they do any good for our mothers and daughters? How low will you go? You are shaming India in the eyes of the world,” Modi said, adding that he will not step back from his duty to the women of the country.
VIDEO | "A prominent leader of INDI alliance used indecent language in the assembly shamelessly. Not a single leader of INDI alliance is speaking a word regarding it. How much will they stoop low and bring bad name to the country?" says PM Modi at a rally in Guna, Madhya Pradesh.… pic.twitter.com/tB3astU6es
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) November 8, 2023
Nitish, who is facing calls for his resignation, apologised Wednesday for his remarks in the Bihar Assembly where he said educated married women would know how to restrain their husbands from impregnating them. The CM credited the state’s focus on educating women to Bihar’s low fertility rate, which he said had come down from 4.2 to 2.1 in 12 years.
The Janata Dal (United) leader, who has galvanised the country’s Opposition to come together on a common platform to take on the BJP in 2024, defended his comments even as he apologised for the language he used, saying he was only talking about women’s education, and how the state’s attempts to educate women had yielded results in lowering the population.
“All I wanted to highlight in my speech was the need to educate women…If a married woman in Bihar has studied beyond matriculation, then the state’s rate of reproduction is less than the national average,” Kumar told reporters Wednesday.
He added that the numbers had delighted him, strengthening his resolve to focus more on women’s education.
While his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said Kumar was merely talking about sex education, the chief minister’s comments snowballed into a political slugfest with even the central women’s rights body slamming it as “not only regressive but also egregiously insensitive to women’s rights and choices”.
The BJP called Kumar’s comments “misogynistic, vulgar, sexist and patriarchal”, and asked for a public apology. Its Delhi women’s unit also protested in the capital, demanding Nitish Kumar’s resignation.
Defending his leader Wednesday, Bihar’s Parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary told ThePrint that the chief minister was only pointing out that Bihar’s fertility rate had dropped from 4.2 to 2.1 within a span of 12 years because of his government’s efforts to educate girls. “It is a big achievement. The CM has already apologised for the language, but the opposition is bent on making ‘til ka taad’ (a big deal) of the issue,” Chaudhary added.
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