3 min readJaipurFeb 17, 2026 02:32 PM IST
BJP MLA from Weir Assembly, Bahadur Singh Koli, has kicked up a storm by likening the BJP and Congress budgets to the birth of a boy and a girl, respectively, and saying that the Congress is now in the Opposition for the same reason.
Speaking in the Assembly on Monday evening during the debate on the state budget, Singh, MLA from the SC reserved seat of Weir in Bharatpur, said, “Ours is youth budget, theirs is an old-age budget… our honourable CM Bhajan Lal Sharma, our government gave birth to a boy in the very first budget, and then again in the second and third budgets. The one who gives birth to a boy in their youth is always useful.”
“And when Ashok Gehlot was the CM, he made announcements in his last budget, but a girl child was born, not a boy child, and hence you’re sitting in the Opposition,” Koli said.
Other BJP MLAs sitting near Koli could be seen laughing at his comments.
Koli, a Lok Sabha MP and a third-term MLA, has two sons and two daughters from his 1977 marriage to Lakshmi Devi.
Demanding a public apology from Koli, Leader of Opposition Tika Ram Jully said, “The anti-girl child remarks made by the BJP MLA are clear evidence of the BJP’s anti-women and patriarchal mindset. His assertion that the Bhajan Lal government’s budget is ‘born a boy’ and the Gehlot government’s budget is ‘born a girl’ reflects a deeply conservative and narrow mindset.”
“They probably don’t remember that when a girl is born, she becomes Rani Lakshmibai and gives the British a tough time, and when she becomes Indira Gandhi, she destroys the nation’s enemies. And when she becomes Sonia Gandhi, she empowers the marginalised. Figures like warrior Kalibai, Amrita Devi, martyr Hadi Rani, and Mirabai are revered in Rajasthan, so why does the BJP have such an anti-girl mindset?” Jully said.
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Referring to former CM Vasundhara Raje, he said, “The budget which Koli was praising was also presented in the House by a woman, and the Speaker of the House in which he stood and made this indecent statement was also once a woman.”
He said that such thinking “is not only an insult to women but also undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in society. If public representatives themselves use such discriminatory language, how will gender discrimination be eradicated from society?”
