You have given respectability to ISIS by likening it to RSS: Arun Jaitley chides Ghulam Nabi Azad

QUICK PILL

• Leader of the House Arun Jaitley said he personally respected Azad but \"he should think if he has knowingly or unknowingly slipped ... you have given respectability to ISIS.\"
• \"In the fight for secularism, you will find people from all sects and religions but not in fundamentalism,\" Arun Jaitley.

Ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress today sparred in the Rajya Sabha over remarks of Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad allegedly comparing RSS with terrorist organisation ISIS.

While BJP and its ministers wanted Azad to withdraw his controversial remarks and apologise, the Congress leader denied having drawn a parallel between the two and said he was submitting a CD of his speech to the government and is willing to face privilege motion if anything incriminating was found.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi slipped in a reference to the alleged remarks made by Azad while giving the government's response to a concern raised by some members over RSS leaders' remarks on the continuation of reservation. After this incident, Azad read out the verbatim speech he made at an event organised by Jamait Ulama-i-Hind last week.

He said that in the speech, he stated that there was no fight between the Hindus and Muslims of India; it was a fight over ideology.

Rueing that Muslims were joining a terrorist organisation such as ISIS that is destroying Islamic traditions, Azad said he had stated that "we oppose to organisations like ISIS like we oppose RSS."

He added, "if someone in Islam does wrong, they are no less than RSS. Where is the comparison? If I had said ISIS and RSS are same there would have been a comparison."

He said he had stated that Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh fundamentalists have to be fought as they are against the country. "We have to fight them all together."

-PTI