Mobilenews24x7 Bureau
New Delhi, Feb 9 : A brief war of words over use of Hindi versus English was witnessed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday as DMK MP A Ganeshmurthi asked a question in Tamil, and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal insisted that he will answer the same in Hindi. Ganeshmurthi had asked a question about Foreign Direct Investment in the Question Hour in Tamil. Goyal said that he missed the initial part of the question, and asked the MP to repeat. Ganeshmurhti said if he asks the question in English, the Minister will have to reply in English. A brief uproar was witnessed in the House and angry exchanges happened between the Ruling and the Opposition benches. Speaker Om Birla asked the DMK MP to repeat the question. Goyal said he would give the answer in Hindi and it will be translated on headphones, as is the custom. “Is there a rule I have to answer in the same language in which the question is asked? I will reply in Hindi,” he said. Last week, a similar argument broke out between Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. The Union Minister replied to a Supplementary Question asked by a DMK MP from Tamil Nadu in Hindi. Tharoor told the Minister it was an “apman (insult)” that he was responding in Hindi. Scindia questioned why he was objecting to reply in Hindi. Speaker Om Birla also said that it was not an insult.
