Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Sunday came under fire for making offensive comment at interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi during an election rally at Sonipat. He used a Hindi idiom to suggest that Congress president is “khoda pahad nikli chuhiya, who bhi mari hui.”

The Congress hit back saying, the comment showed “the anti-women character” of the BJP.

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“After losing the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi resigned as the Congress president and stated that new party chief would not be from the Gandhi family. We welcomed the move thinking this would be an end to dynastic politics. But they spent three months moving around the country in search of a new party president and after three months who became the president? Sonia Gandhi. ‘Khoda pahar nikli chuhiya,who bhi mari hui’. (Digging the mountain to find a mice, that too dead) This is their situation,” Khattar said during the election rally.

The Congress has demanded an apology from the Chief Minister. In a Tweet (in Hindi) Congress said, “ The comment made by BJP’s Chief Minister is not only cheap and degrading, it also portrays BJP’s anti- women character. We condemn Chief Minister ML Khattar’s remark and demand an immediate apology from him.”

Rahul Gandhi had quit the party’s top post in May after its disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha election and subsequently refused the party’s requests to withdraw his resignation. On his resignation, owning up responsibility for the party’s poor showing in the elections, CWC said that it was evidence of Rahul’s “instinctive moral compass” setting new standards of accountability in public life”.

Rahul Gandhi  also said that his mother or sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will also not take the top post and a non-Gandhi should get the chance.

After months of meeting and consultations Sonia Gandhi assumed the presidency of Congress again in August, two years after she had relinquished the post for her son, Rahul Gandhi. Sonia accepted the Congress Working Committee (CWC) proposal to take over as interim president.

BJP always targets Congress for practicing dynasty politics with the top post mostly going to Gandhis.

Haryana Chief Minister Khattar is famous for his controversial statements. In August he told a gathering in the state that people were saying that Kashmiri women can be brought there for marriage now that Article 370 had ended.

Congress ruled the state for two consecutive terms till 2014.

Haryana will go to polls on October 21 and the counting will take place on October 24.