Sonia refuses to react to BJP minister’s ‘narrow mindset’

NEEMUCH/ PATNA/ NEW DELHI: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi dismissed Union minister Giriraj Singh’s racist remarks about her, saying she need not reply to people with a “narrow mindset”, but hundreds of party workers took to the streets demanding his resignation on Thursday.

As the row refused to die down, a court in Bihar ordered police to file an FIR against the minister of state for micro, small and medium enterprises after a Congress leader filed a defamation case, accusing him of lowering the status of women and passing derogatory comments against the Congress president.

“What did he say? I think I should not reply to persons with such narrow mindset,” Gandhi said when reporters sought her reaction during a visit to rainravaged villages in Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district.

Singh, known for controversial comments in the past, triggered a political storm when he asked reporters in Bihar’s Hajipur town on Tuesday whether the party would have accepted Gandhi’s leadership if she were not white- skinned. “If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian and if she wasn’t white-skinned, would the Congress accept her as a leader,” he said in what he later described as an off- the- record interaction.

CONTINUED ON P8

RELATED REPORT, P9

WHAT DID HE SAY? I THINK I SHOULD NOT REPLY TO PERSONS WITH SUCH NARROW MINDSET

SONIA GANDHI, Congress president