Chandigarh: A day after Congress MPs stalled his reply to the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the opposition for branding Union minister Ravneet Singh Bittu a “traitor”.

Replying to the debate on the President’s Address in the Rajya Sabha, the Prime Minister referred to Wednesday’s heated exchanges in the parliament premises, recalling Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s remark in which he allegedly addressed Bittu as “my traitor friend”. Calling the comment deeply offensive, Modi said the remark was not merely an attack on an individual but an affront to the Sikh community at large.

“Yesterday, the Congress called a Sikh MP a traitor. This is an insult to Sikhs and to the Sikh Gurus. It reflects the Congress’s deep-rooted hatred towards Sikhs. What is even more unfortunate is that there is no sense of regret,” Modi said. Emphasising Bittu’s lineage, the Prime Minister said the country would never tolerate a Sikh whose family has made sacrifices for the nation being labelled a traitor merely because he chose a different political ideology. “Some people in the Congress will eventually drown their own party,” he added in a sharp political barb.

The Prime Minister also expressed anguish over the disruption in the Lok Sabha that forced the deferment of his reply to the President’s Address. Referring to the incident in which women Congress MPs allegedly blocked his seat, Modi described the episode as “extremely painful”.

“This was not just an insult to me. It was an insult to the President, the Constitution, India’s tribal communities and to women,” he said, noting that the disruption interrupted his response to the address delivered by President Droupadi Murmu at the joint sitting of Parliament on February 28.

Taking his attack further, Modi accused the Congress of viewing the people of India as a burden rather than a strength. “For the Congress, citizens are problems. For us, citizens are solutions,” he said. To underline his point, the Prime Minister cited a speech by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in which she quoted her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, as saying that India had “35 crore challenges”—a reference to the country’s population at the time. Indira Gandhi, Modi recalled, later remarked that she herself had “57 crore problems”, again equating citizens with challenges.

Modi also alleged that by obstructing proceedings in the Lok Sabha, Congress MPs insulted a Dalit leader from Andhra Pradesh who was presiding over the House at the time, as well as the Northeast, pointing out that a senior MP from Assam was also in the Chair during the uproar.

The Prime Minister’s remarks are expected to further intensify the political confrontation between the ruling BJP and the Congress, with issues of parliamentary decorum, identity politics and respect for constitutional institutions now firmly at the centre of the ongoing standoff.