NEW DELHI: A Rajasthan BJP MLA sparked a controversy during the assembly debate on the state budget after drawing a gendered comparison between present BJP government’s budget and that of the previous Congress regime.Participating in the debate on Monday evening, Weir MLA Bahadur Singh Koli described the BJP’s budget as a “youth budget” and the Congress’s as an “old-age budget”. He went on to say that the BJP government had “given birth to a boy” in its first budget and continued to do so in subsequent budgets, adding that “one who gives birth to a boy in their youth is always useful”.Targeting the previous Congress government, Koli said that when Ashok Gehlot was chief minister, announcements made in the last budget resulted in the “birth of a girl, not a boy”, and claimed that this was why the Congress was now in the opposition, news agency PTI reported.The remarks drew strong protests from Congress members on Tuesday. Leader of the opposition Tika Ram Jully criticised the statement, calling it discriminatory and inappropriate.”On February 16, your MLA, while speaking on the budget, made remarks that discriminate between a son and a daughter. Your MLAs were laughing. I feel ashamed that even today such thinking persists,” Jully said. Referring to his own family, he added that he has two daughters and questioned how such views could be held “in this day and age”. Jully demanded that the ruling party clarify its position, asserting that gender-based analogies had no place in a serious discussion on the budget.Defending his remarks later, Koli told reporters, “What is wrong with this? It is our Brijbhasha.” Asked if the statement was inappropriate, he said, “Kya bayan galat tha (How was the statement wrong)? I said a good budget has been tabled; that a chhora (boy) has been born.”He further claimed that the Congress had presented a “populist budget ahead of elections to fool the public”, which he likened to “the birth of a girl child”.
