'When girl is born, you blame the Centre': BJP MLA's remark sparks storm in Punjab Vidhan Sabha
Ashwani Sharma Punjab Assembly Remark: BJP MLA Ashwani Sharma’s girl-boy remark on Centre funds triggers uproar in Punjab Vidhan Sabha; AAP demands apology, Sharma cites Bathinda, MGNREGA protests in defence.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, August 7
A discussion on illegal mining in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha veered into an entirely different and far more combustible row on Thursday, after BJP MLA Ashwani Sharma’s remark on the birth of girls and boys triggered uproar among ruling AAP legislators, particularly women members, on the fourth day of the Monsoon Session.
Ashwani Sharma Punjab Assembly Remark: Sharma was pushing back against allegations from the treasury benches that the Centre had choked funds to Punjab, when he reached for an analogy that would dominate headlines rather than the mining debate he was supposed to be having.
“If a boy is born, you say it is because of your hard work. When a girl is born, you blame the Centre,” Sharma said, prefacing the line with, “I say this with an apology.”
The apology did little to cushion the blow. Treasury bench MLAs, several of them women, were instantly on their feet, demanding Sharma hold his ears and seek unconditional forgiveness.
Ashwani Sharma Punjab Assembly remark: How it started
Ashwani Sharma Punjab Assembly Remark: The trigger was Mining and Geology Minister Barinder Goyal’s charge that the Centre was deliberately squeezing Punjab’s finances. Goyal claimed mining revenue would have touched ₹20,000 crore — a figure he attributed to a promise by AAP “Supremo” Arvind Kejriwal — had the Union government cooperated. He also cited a Central appreciation award the state had received for action against illegal mining, arguing this undercut any suggestion Punjab was going soft on the issue.
That was the cue for Sharma. Rather than engage on the mining numbers, he turned the debate around, asking the House to explain the fate of the AAP government’s “Jisda Khet, Usdi Reet” scheme — under which sand rights were to belong to the owner of the agricultural land — and alleging that anyone who raised questions about illegal mining, including journalists, was threatened by senior AAP leaders into silence.
It was in the course of that counter-attack, aimed at deflecting the Centre-funds allegation back onto the state government, that he made the girl-boy comparison.
The pushback
Jagraon MLA Saravjit Kaur Manuke of AAP called the remark reflective of the BJP’s “regressive and discriminatory mindset” towards women. Cabinet minister Aman Arora asked why Sharma was distinguishing between sons and daughters at all, when parents treat both with equal affection, and invoked the Centre’s own “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” slogan to argue Sharma’s words sat oddly with his party’s stated position on the girl child.
Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema went further, saying the remark had hurt the sentiments of women in the House, and redirected the argument back to substance: Punjab’s financial distress, he said, stemmed from delays in the release of Central funds, and BJP legislators would do better taking that fight to the Union government than aiming it at the state administration.
Sharma’s counter-list
Cornered, Sharma did not simply retreat — he turned to a list of his own, asking AAP legislators where their concern for women had been on other occasions: when Valmiki women, teachers, nurses and women farmers were lathi-charged in Bathinda on February 7, or when women protested under the MGNREGA scheme on July 15. On each occasion, he said, the ruling party had stayed silent.
It was a pointed move — using the state government’s own record on women to answer accusations about his own remark, rather than simply apologising and letting the matter rest.
The climbdown, in stages
Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan intervened as members traded sharp words, asking Sharma directly whether he wished to apologise. Sharma clarified in the House that his reference to girls was merely a “commonly used phrase,” said he held the utmost respect for women, and invoked Sanskrit shlokas to underline the point. He also asked that his remarks be expunged from the Assembly record.
Later, speaking to reporters outside the House, he struck a similar note — regret paired with a rebuttal. “We have respect for women in our hearts. I have publicly expressed regret if anyone was offended, but they should not indulge in politics in the name of women,” he said.
By evening, the mining debate that had prompted the exchange in the first place had all but disappeared from the day’s headlines — replaced by a row over a nine-word sentence.
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