Hyderabad: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Tejasvi Surya on Sunday, April 19, called the Congress “a party of illiterates” amid the uproar over his recent speech comparing the bifurcation of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to India-Pakistan partition.
“I really feel the Congress party is a party of illiterates. They should go and listen to what I have said and try to understand it. The sentences I have spoken are simple. I do not want to justify or glorify their ignorance with a response. I want the Congress party to try to understand what I have said. The Congress party is either deliberately ignorant or suffers from deliberate ignorance,” he told reporters.
On April 16, while speaking in the Lok Sabha in support of the Delimitation Bill 2026, the Bengaluru South MP likened the bifurcation “in a worse fashion than the British did during the partition of India and Pakistan,” drawing sharp criticism from both the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and Telangana Congress leaders.
Telangana BC Welfare Minister Ponnam Prabhakar demanded that the Speaker of the Lok Sabha immediately expel Surya from membership in Parliament, and his remarks be expunged from the Lok Sabha’s records.
The Telangana Youth Congress also demanded an unconditional apology and removal of the remarks from parliamentary records.
BRS leaders, KTR and Harish Rao called the comparison utterly foolish, highly insensitive and irresponsible and a grave insult to the state’s identity.Tejasvi’s fellow party colleague and Union Minister Bandi Sanjay defended the former, stating his remarks were misrepresented. He said that Surya’s comments referred to the handling of the State’s bifurcation by the Congress and alleged that several youths had died by suicide during that period.
G Kishan Reddy, who had earlier supported Tejasvi, took a U-turn, admitting his remarks on Telangana were wrong. “He (Tejasvi Surya) admitted his remarks were wrong and so do I,” he said, speaking at a press meet in Delhi.
