The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday alleged that a no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition against Vice President and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar was an insult to the Jat community, to which he belongs.

The Opposition, in the no-confidence motion, accused Dhankhar of conducting the proceedings of the Upper House of Parliament in an “extremely partisan manner”.

However, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said that although the Opposition talked about caste, it was insulting Dhankhar, who hailed “from an ordinary farmer’s family”.

Patra said: “The Congress and its allies know that they do not have the numbers [to get the motion passed in the Rajya Sabha]. This notice is going to fall. However, the party introduced such a notice for the first time in the Rajya Sabha, only to insult the Jat community.”

The BJP spokesperson said: “Jats are patriots. They have shed their blood for India and its freedom. Today you are making such allegations against a Jat vice president. Somewhere you are trying to defame him by saying that he is not doing his work properly.”

Article 67(b) of the Constitution states that the vice president may be removed from his office if a resolution is passed by the Council of States, or Rajya Sabha, and agreed to by the House of the People, which is the Lok Sabha.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said that his party was forced to move the no-confidence motion as Dhankhar was “not listening to the leader of Opposition; he is allowing the treasury bench MPs to make the wildest of charges, in the most objectionable language against our most senior leaders and they are being encouraged to do so.”

The Winter Session of Parliament will end on December 20.

On Wednesday, Patra also called the Opposition INDIA bloc’s decision to move the Supreme Court against the alleged manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines in Maharashtra as “painful and disturbing”.

The BJP spokesperson alleged that this was a distraction tactic by the Congress and its INDIA bloc allies after the ruling party raised the matter of “Gandhi-Nehru family’s link” with billionaire George Soros. The Hindutva party has frequently accused the Congress of conspiring with the Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist to destabilise the Indian government.

The ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra won the Assembly election by a landslide. Days after the result was announced, the Congress’ Maharashtra unit had accused the Election Commission of tampering with voter data. The party had asked how voter turnout increased by 7.83 percentage points after the official polling time had ended.

In response to the allegations, the Election Commission said that the increase in voter turnout after polling hours is not unusual and follows standard procedures.