Political exchanges got fiesty in Maharashtra on Saturday, when Congress MLA Praniti Shinde called PM Modi a ‘dengue mosquito’ while addressing a public rally.
The Solapur South Cong MLA, who’s also former Maha CM Sushilkumar Shinde’s daughter, made the comments at an event.
She was quoted saying by India Today: “We have a new dengue mosquito in our country, whose name is Modi baba. Everyone is falling sick because of him. So do whatever you can, spray pesticides and throw him out of the power next time."
She also called local BJP MP Sharad Bansode a ‘drunkard’. She said: “The BJP leaders have not spent a single penny for the development of this district. What the government has given to our district are two leaders who keep fighting amongst themselves and one drunkard MP.”
Responding to her comment, the BJP MP made disparaging remarks pertaining to her sartorial choices and said: “Those who were caught in rave parties in sleeveless clothes have no right to attack me. I know what she does in Mumbai. If I open my mouth she will have no face to show in Solapur. This is the last warning to her.”
Comparisons to mosquitoes, insects and other small specimen isn’t particularly rare in Indian politics and even PM Modi had famously compared the grand old party Congress to termites during a heated election campaign in 2017 ahead of the state’s assembly polls. He had said: “If you clean just on the surface, termites come back after a few days. The Congress party's depraved mentality is like termites. You cannot just change the government and expect to be done with it, you have to take them out from the roots. Only then we can free Himachal of this disease."
In Maharashtra politics, this particular analogy is also quite popular, with Sharad Pawar calling Shiv Sena a two-faced earthworm – for criticising BJP while being an ally – which led to a Saamna editorial calling Pawar a termite.
Of course, as usual, CM Arvind Kejriwal takes the cake, given that while most leaders reserve such epithets for their political rivals, the Delhi CM self-anointed himself a ‘dengue mosquito’ and said famously in 2012, while replying to Congress’ Salman Khurshid who had called his attacks similar to a mosquito bite. He had said: “I am a dengue (causing) mosquito. I will bite BJP and Congress and they will be in trouble.”
