New Delhi: The Congress filed a complaint at Parliament Street Police Station on Thursday alleging BJP leaders misbehaved with its chief Mallikarjun Kharge and demanded an FIR under the sections of "assault, grievous hurt and battery" against them, an officer said. The delegation of Congress MPs, including Digvijaya Singh, Mukul Wasnik, Rajiv Shukla and Pramod Tiwari, filed the complaint visiting the station in person, the officer said.
A delegation of BJP leaders was still inside New Delhi DCP Devesh Kumar Mahla's office there, when the Congress leaders came with their complaint and were asked to wait inside the ACP's room. A senior officer said police have received the complaint and are looking into it.
"Eighty-four-year-old Dalit leader Mallikarjun Kharge was pushed and misbehaved by the BJP leaders. We have come here to file a complaint against this act," Tiwari told the media at the station. The four-page complaint was filed on behalf of around 12 MPs of Congress, with their names and signature on it.
It read, "I write to you in view of a very serious, grave and brutal offence committed by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against the Leader of Opposition (Rajya Sabha) and President of the Indian National Congress (INC), Shri Mallikarjun Kharge ji." "The incident occurred on December 19, 2024 within the premises of the Parliament when the Opposition MPs including Mallikarjun Kharge ji, Rahul Gandhi Ji, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, KC Venugopal Ji were staging a peaceful protest against the scathing remarks made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah against Dr. BR Ambedkar. I was also physically present on the spot."
The complainants alleged that "certain unscrupulous" Members of Parliament belonging to the BJP stood in way of their protest march with the intention to cause a ruckus. "Despite their repeated attempts at disturbing the peaceful protest, the Opposition MPs did not budge.
"Thereinafter, I witnessed that in their bid to stop the protest march, the BJP MPs exerted physical force on Kharge Ji by pushing him to the ground. This has inflicted bodily injuries to Kharge Ji, Neeraj Dangi and others," the complaint said. The MPs also urged police to identify the culprits from a video the captured the melee.
They alleged that the BJP leaders did not even tak into account Kharge's advanced age -- he is 80 --and exerted "criminal force" on him. "This rash act committed by the BJP MPs clearly amounted to endangering the life of Kharge ji," the complainants said and demanded several MPs, including Bunty Vivek Sahu, be booked under several charges of voluntary hurting the Congress leader.
Earlier in the day, a face-off between the opposition and NDA MPs in Parliament premises over the alleged insult to B R Ambedkar injured former minister Pratap Chandra Sarangi. The BJP accused Rahul Gandhi of pushing the senior member, a charge the Congress leader rejected.
The Congress also claimed that BJP MPs pushed its chief Mallikarjun Kharge and "physically manhandled" the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. In a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Congress MPs asked him to order an investigation into the incident.
