Coming out all guns blazing at the BJP-led Centre during a debate in the Lok Sabha on a resolution on the opening of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday said he has the highest respect for the deity but ‘hates’ Nathuram Godse, the assailant who fatally shot Mahatma Gandhi.

Bristling at the ruling BJP during the discussion on the Ram Temple in the Lower House, the AIMIM MP said, “I have the highest respect for Lord Ram but hate Nathuram Godse because he killed the person whose last words were ‘Hey Ram’.”

Taking the attack to the ruling party at the Centre a notch higher, Mr Owaisi demanded that the BJP come out with a clarification on whether the government has a ‘religion of its own’.

“I want to ask today: is this government under the leadership of PM Modi for a particular community, the practitioners of a certain religion or the entire country? Does this government have a religion of its own? I believe that this country does not and should not stand for any particular religion,” Owaisi said.

The AIMIM chief further called on the government to come clean on whether the resolution on the opening of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ of the deity on January 22 was meant merely to mark the triumph of one religion over the other.

“Through this resolution on the January 22nd event in Ayodhya, is this government sending out a message that it marked the triumph of one religion over the other? What larger message are they sending out to the 17 crore Muslims in the country?” the AIMIM leader asked.

Also lashing out at the BJP for allegedly labelling leaders from the minority community after Muslim invaders and rulers, Mr Owaisi asked, “Am I a spokesperson for Babar, Jinnah or Aurangzeb?”

The Rajya Sabha, meanwhile, also held a discussion on the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ ceremony of Shri Ram Lalla in Ayodhya on the last day of the 17th Lok Sabha.

Taking the floor in the Upper House during the discussion, BJP national president JP Nadda said the ‘Pran Pratishtha Day’ marked the resurgence or rebirth of the country’s spiritual and cultural conscience.

“When we speak of the 500-year-old history, it was that of slavery and oppression. However, January 22, 2024 will go down as a day of rebirth and resurgence of the country’s spiritual and cultural conscience. This day will remain memorable for thousands of years,” Mr Nadda said.

Mobile internet connectivity has been suspended in seven districts as the BJP-led Haryana government gears up to block the farmers’ march to Delhi on Tuesday. The Manohar Lal Khattar government has issued a notification, saying dongle services provided on mobile phones, will remain suspended and only voice calls would go through.

The farmers are demanding a law to guarantee Minimum Support Price (MSP) for their produce and pension and insurance schemes. More than 200 organisations are part of the protest.

Mobile internet services have been suspended in Ambala, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Jind, Hisar, Fatehabad and Sirsa districts till Tuesday night.

Police, meanwhile, have planned to seal Haryana-Punjab borders to ensure protesting farmers from the neighbouring state cannot enter Haryana before proceeding to Delhi. This move will inconvenience those travelling between Chandigarh and Delhi. Police have announced alternative routes for this purpose.

Haryana Police have advised commuters to avoid arterial roads on Tuesday. It has also warned of traffic disruption due to the protest. On the borders between Haryana and Delhi, cement barriers, barbed wires and sandbags are in place to stop the farmers from crossing into the national capital. Water cannons and drones have also been brought in.

Fifty companies of paramilitary forces have been deployed to assist Haryana Police. Haryana police chief Shatrujeet Kapur warned of taking strict action if anyone tries to disrupt peace. The police have asked farmers to stay away and also warned of action if public property is damaged. Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij, too, has said the state government “will ensure complete peace”.

The Centre, meanwhile, has invited the protesting farmers for talks tomorrow. But it is unlikely that the meeting will result in the farmers calling off protests because the demands require detailed discussion and parliamentary moves.

The protest is being organised by Samyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political) and several farmers’ organisations have distanced itself from it. Bharatiya Kisan Union (Lakhowal), which was part of the farmers’ protest in 2020-21 that led to the Centre withdrawing three laws, said they won’t join Tuesday’s protest. Instead, they will participate in a protest on Friday. The BKU, however, warned that if farmers part of Tuesday’s protest are “manhandled”, all unions will hit the streets.

Former US president Donald Trump has mocked his Republican rival Nikki Haley over the absence of her husband, who is deployed overseas, drawing a sharp reaction from the Indian-American politician who said the person who disrespects military families has no business being commander-in-chief.

Haley’s husband Major Michael Haley, a commissioned officer with the South Carolina National Guard, is currently on a year-long deployment with the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Bridge, which is providing support in the Horn of Africa. He was deployed in June.

The war of words between two Republican presidential candidates started with a Trump rally on Saturday in South Carolina where the 77-year-old former president, seemingly unaware of his deployment,  started questioning his whereabouts. “Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone,” Trump said at his rally in Conway in South Carolina, his first visit to the state this year.

Haley, 52, the only candidate against Trump in the Republican Party’s nomination race, fired back at Trump’s comments later on Saturday.

“Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back; get on a debate stage and say it to my face,” she told a crowd in South Carolina.

“I am proud of Michael’s service. Every military family knows it’s a sacrifice. I have long talked about the fact that we need to have mental competency tests for [politicians] over the age of 75,” she said.

Trump claims he would pass that – maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t, she said.

“But if you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone to be president of the United States,” she said.

“Michael is deployed serving the US country, something you know nothing about. Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander-in-chief,” Haley said.

Trump’s comment on Haley’s husband also drew criticism from various quarters.

“Only a sick individual would put down a service member who is deployed. This disrespects every military family in our country. It’s exactly the chaos we don’t need in America,” said General (rtd) Don Bolduc.

In a rare move, Michael Haley fired back at the former president, posting a meme on Twitter reading, “The difference between humans and animals? Animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack,” while mentioning Trump’s account in the caption.

Continuing his attack, Trump alleged that Haley is the candidate of globalists and warmongers who want to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on endless wars.

“The radical left Democrats want Nikki Haley because they know that she’s easy to beat. She’s very easy to beat. Haley supports a 23% national sales tax, and she wants to gut Medicare and Social Security…,” he said.

Earlier, Haley kicked off her “Beast of the Southeast” bus tour with a stop in Newberry.

In an interaction with the media, she spoke about her opponents’ lack of stamina and stressed the importance of mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.

Her campaign also distributed examples of the mental competency tests used by medical professionals, demonstrating that it should not be a difficult test for those who are seeking the highest office in the land.

“(For months) I have always said that (President) Joe Biden was not going to be president. You look at what’s happened in the last couple of days, and you see exactly what I’m talking about. The fact that we’re dealing with someone who the special counsel said that their memory was failing, that they are diminished,” she said “It’s bigger than just Joe Biden. You can look at the same thing: whether it’s Donald Trump getting me confused with Nancy Pelosi, his temper tantrums, the things he’s done,” Haley said.

In a damaging report, a special US counsel last week said that President Joe Biden “willfully” mishandled classified documents as a private citizen but concluded that it would be difficult to convict him as he comes across as an “elderly man with a poor memory”.

The report from Special Counsel Robert Hur has prompted an election-year brawl and renewed questions about Biden’s advanced age.

“It’s time for a new generational leader. The party that dismisses their 80-year-old candidate is the party that will win the presidency, without a doubt. The Democrats are waking up to that now. You’re going to see them make their moves,” she said.

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