Congress Veteran's MLA Brother Backs BJP Leader's "Surpanakha" Remark

Even as the Congress has criticised BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya for his "women look like 'Surpanakha' in bad clothes" remark, MLA Lakshman Singh from the opposition party in Madhya Pradesh has come out in support of the BJP leader.

Lakshman Singh, the five-time Lok Sabha member and three-term legislator, is the younger brother of Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh. Mr Vijayvargiya made the controversial remark at a religious function in Madhya Pradesh's Indore last Thursday.

The Congress state unit later staged protests against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in Bhopal and Indore.

On Sunday, senior Congress MLA Lakshman Singh in a tweet supported Vijayvargiya's statement.

“Listened to Kailash ji's Surpanakha statement. It is true in some sense. Indore is the city of Ahilya Devi's sanskars and attention should be paid to the dresses. But Kailash Bhai, you are the uncrowned king of Indore, then how is this happening?” said the legislator.

Lakshman Singh had joined the BJP in 2003 and resigned from the party in 2009.

Surpanakha was the sister of the demon king Ravana in the epic Ramayana.

Last week, Mr Vijayvargiya had said, “When I leave for home at night, I see educated young people and children under the influence of drugs....I feel like getting down (from the car) and slapping them five to seven times to sober them up".

"We see the goddess in women. But (with) the kind of bad dresses the girls wear and move around, they do not embody the goddess but look like 'Surpanakha'. God has given you a good and beautiful body.....dress well, friends," he had said.

A video of the religious programme where the BJP leader passed the controversial remarks later went viral.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)