After mocking Shah over illness, Cong MP stokes another row

Bengaluru: A day after mocking Amit Shah over his illness, Congress Rajya Sabha member B K Hariprasad stoked another controversy on Friday saying the BJP president was not suffering from ‘swine flu’.

“We also know people in AIIMS. He has not been admitted because of the flu. Let me get the fact. Then I will get back to you,” the MP said when asked by reporters what he meant by his ‘pig fever’ jibe.

When asked about the ailment of Shah if it was not swine flu, Hariprasad said that was the report he got.

To a question whether Shah was suffering from something else, he said, “I don’t know.” 

Hariprasad also refused to retract from his remarks made Thursday despite furious reaction by the BJP which has demanded that the Congress sack him and tender a public apology.

“Whatever statement I made is there. I will talk to you later,” he said, adding that he spoke in Kannada, which was his mother tongue and there was nothing wrong in that.

Speaking at a Congress protest in Bengaluru against the alleged attempt by the BJP to dislodge the Congress-JDS government in Karnataka by luring the ruling coalition MLAs, Hariprasad had said in Kannada,”As a few legislators have already come back, Amit Shah is shaken and has got fever. It is not a normal fever. It is swine flu.” 

He added that “You should know that if you try to destabilise the Karnataka government, not just swine flu, you will get vomiting and dysentery also.” 

Shah was Wednesday admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for treatment of swine flu.
Union ministers, BJP leaders in the state and in Delhi had slammed Hariprasad and used his comments to attack the opposition party.

“The kind of ugly and indecent comments Congress MP B K Hariprasad have made about BJP president Amit Shah’s health show the standards of the Congress. Flu is curable but it is difficult to cure Congress leaders’ mental illness,” Union minister Piyush Goyal had said.

Apart from Goyal several union ministers, including Rajyavardhan Rathore, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, had reacted sharply.

The Congress sought to distance itself with its spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi saying the party could never think of wishing illness to any BJP leader.