Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday seized on a “personal insult” hurled at him in the Lok Sabha to turn the tables on the government and project himself as a fighter for the underprivileged, iterating his commitment to a caste census in the country.

The conclusion of the discussion on the budget in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday saw the Treasury benches led by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and BJP MP Anurag Singh Thakur go all guns blazing to target Rahul.

“You can happily insult me as much as you want, do it on a daily basis, but take it from me that we will pass the caste census in this House,” Rahul intervened after a huge uproar over Thakur launching an oblique personal attack on him.

“Those whose caste is unknown are calling for an enumeration,” Thakur had said in his budget discussion speech, leading to protests from the Opposition benches. As Thakur sought to defend his remarks saying he had not taken any names and the Opposition benches demanded an apology, Rahul intervened again.

“Whoever in this country speaks for Dalits, tribals and OBCs, fights for them, they have to take abuse from others. I will take all the abuse happily.... Anurag Thakur has insulted me, he has abused me, but I don’t want an apology from him. I am fighting a battle and I will continue to do so. You insult me as much as you want, I don’t want an apology,” Rahul said.

“This speech by my young and energetic colleague, Shri @ianuragthakur is a must hear. A perfect mix of facts and humour, exposing the dirty politics of the INDI Alliance,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X, attaching a video of Thakur’s speech.

Rahul came under attack once again when the finance minister rose to reply to the budget discussion, again over his caste census pitch. Sitharaman started with the “halwa” ceremony before the budget preparation, which Rahul had used in the House on Monday to slam the government, and invoked anti-reservation comments attributed to Nehru-Gandhi family members to target Rahul.

“Charity begins at home,” Sitharaman told the House and went on to claim that there was no Scheduled Caste in the nine-member board heading the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. “Out of the 5 directors in the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust, there was not one SC,” she added. “And, they want to lecture us on the representation of the SCs, STs and OBCs,” she remarked, amid an uproar.

Sitharaman went on to claim that Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had all opposed reservations and used it to slam Rahul’s demand for a caste census. “In 1981, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in an interview had said that ‘promotion of idiots in the name of reservations would harm the entire country’…,” she said, as the BJP members shouted “shame, shame…” She said that both Indira and Rajiv had suppressed the report of the Mandal Commission recommending reservations for the OBCs.

Sitharaman alleged a conspiracy to divide the county into compartments, referring to Rahul's obsrvations on how many SC, ST and OBC officers were involved in the preparation of the budget. She slammed the Opposition for launching a "misleading campaign" that non-NDA states had been ignored in the budget.