CLAIM
A photo doing the rounds on social media claims that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had once said in Parliament that “half of Congress members are fools.”
The message in the photo further states that when the then-Speaker asked Vajpayee to retract his comment, he said: “Forgive me, half the members of Congress are not fools.”
Several social media users have shared similar posts on Facebook, with one of them claiming that Vajpayee made this comment in the 1962 parliamentary session.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claims are false. Taking a cue from one of the posts, The Quint found no such statement made my the late prime minister in parliamentary debates for the year 1962, according to the official Rajya Sabha website.
Vajpayee was a member of the Rajya Sabha that year, reported NDTV.
Senior political commentator Arati Jerath also denied having come across any such statement purportedly made by Vajpayee.
“I have not read, or heard anything of this sort. Had he said something like this, it would have definitely been reported and written about. Also, Vajpayee never indulged in such crass language. His debates in Parliament were always very witty in nature. He never made personal attacks by calling someone a ‘fool’.”Arati Jerath, Political Commentator
SIMILAR CLAIMS IN THE PAST
Previously, a similar statement has been attributed to several leaders across the globe. For instance, claims have also been made about former Britain Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who is quoted as saying that half of the Opposition members are 'a***s’. Consequently, the speaker of the House of Commons asked Disraeli to retract the comment and apologise, to which the British PM’s supposed reaction was similar to Vajpayee’s response, as cited in social media posts.
Quote Investigator, a website that fact-checks quotes attributed to personalities worldwide, said it could not confirm if Disraeli had made this statement in UK Parliament. However, the website noted that the earliest trace of the quote was from a Swedish newspaper in 1927, which had then attributed the quote to a government official who had reportedly lost his temper with his colleagues and called them ‘fools’.
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