A day after Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah likened Opposition parties to animals, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati said it shows the “new low” that the ruling party has stooped to. Congress President Rahul Gandhi also criticised the statement.

On Friday, Shah had said, “I have heard that whenever floods happen, all the animals come together. Similarly, all these animals like snakes, dogs, cats and mongoose are coming together to fight the Modi flood [ahead of the 2019 General Elections].” He soon amended his statement and claimed that he did not equate them to animals. “What I meant was political parties having no ideological similarities are coming together out of fear of Modi,” he later said at a press conference.

“In the arrogance of power, BJP is making a mistake of taking the public as a flock of fools,” Mayawati said on Saturday, PTI reported. “Though the sane public is repeatedly disowning them before the Lok Sabha elections.” She was referring to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s recent defeats in the Lok Sabha bye-polls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.

“A similar kind of dishonouring, controversial and inferior “sanghi” language was used by [Uttar Pradesh] Chief Minister Adityanath during the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bye-polls. For which the common public taught them a strong lesson using a whip,” she said, according to The Indian Express. “Even after that, the top leadership of the BJP does not seem to be leaving their “criminal mindset” and “sanghi way and character”, which the public is not going to overlook.”

She added: “Shah’s statement is enough to prove how low the party has fallen under the leadership of the Guru [Narendra Modi] and the Chela [Amit Shah].”

She also blamed the government for the deadlock in Parliament. It was adjourned indefinitely on Friday, the last day of the Budget Session, after weeks of disruptions and repeated washouts. “Since so many serious cases have surfaced, the BJP is not in a position to face the charges and therefore, the houses were adjourned continuously,” she said. The Modi government knew that if discussions were held, then its “anti-poor, anti-farmers, pro-capitalists policies, corruption and bank scams to the fore and would have put it in the dock in the election year”, she said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi said Shah’s “disrespectful statement” reflected his “mentality”, PTI reported. “Calling the entire opposition animals...see according to Amit Shah and the basic vision of the BJP-RSS, there are only two non-animals in this country. There is Narendra Modi and there is Amit Shah,” Gandhi said in Karnataka’s Kolar.

“Everybody else as far as they are concerned are animals. That’s fine, that is the way they look at the world,” Gandhi said. “It is a disrespectful statement, but we don’t take what Amit Shah says with too much seriousness.”