‘Tiger gone wild, should be sent back to forest’ – Veerappa Moily

Veerappa Moily on Ananth Hegde’s ‘tiger vs donkeys’ remark: ‘Tiger gone wild, should be sent back to forest’

Veerappa Moily poked fun at the remark and, without naming Modi, said the ‘tiger has become wild’ and that in the next elections, the ‘opposition will send the tiger back to the forest’ as the BJP will be defeated.

New Delhi (FE): Senior Congress leader Veerappa Moily today took a jibe at BJP leader Ananth Kumar Hegde for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a tiger and referring to the ‘unity’ among the opposition parties to “monkeys and donkeys”. Speaking to news agency ANI, Moily poked fun at the remark and, without naming Modi, said the ‘tiger has become wild’ and that in the next elections, the ‘opposition will send the tiger back to the forest’ as the BJP will be defeated.

“The tiger has become wild, and has to be sent back to the forest,” Moily said.

The former Union minister was reacting to Hegde’s remark in which he had called PM Modi a tiger and drew an analogy to the ‘unity’ among the opposition parties to the coming together of crows, foxes, donkeys and monkeys.

Hegde had said: “The 2019 elections are very crucial. Our opponents have come together. Crow, monkey, bear, fox have come together.”

“On one side, there is a tiger and on another side, there are monkeys and donkeys. In 2019, you have to decide whether a tiger should win or donkeys and monkeys.”

Hegde, who was inducted into the Modi cabinet in August last year, further said that the Congress party is to be blamed for making people sit on plastic chairs. He claimed that had the BJP ruled the country so long, today “people would be sitting on chairs made of silver”.

The Union minister’s remarks targetted opposition parties who have been successful in recently bypolls, and are chalking out a strategy to forge an alliance to take on the BJP in next year’s Lok Sabha election.

Hegde is a five-time Lok Sabha MP from Uttara Kannada. He had during the Karnataka Assembly polls called Congress president Rahul Gandhi a ‘fake Hindu’. In December last year, he had invited embarrassment for his party when he said that “we (BJP) are here to change the Constitution” which mentions the word “secular”.