A Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Uttar Pradesh on Monday made derogatory remarks about Bahujan Samaj Party President Mayawati. At a public event, Uttar Pradesh BJP President Mahendra Nath Pandey referred to an incident in 1995 when the BSP chief was allegedly locked inside a guest house in Lucknow by Samajwadi Party workers and assaulted after she had quit an alliance, ANI reported.

“I saw on social media that a youth had posted that Akhilesh ji is wrapping a shawl around Mayawati ji,” said the Chandauli MP. “He wrote in his post, putting words in Akhilesh’s mouth: this is the same shawl which my father took off in the guest house.”

Pandey added that the BJP has already “tested and rejected Mayawati”, News18 reported. “She cannot do anything, but has turned Akhilesh into a ‘babua’,” he said, referring to the party’s alliance with the SP in Uttar Pradesh.

Pandey’s comments came more than a week after another BJP legislator from the state had said that Mayawati lacks self-respect and had compared her to a eunuch.

“She has no sense of self-respect, she was almost molested earlier and yet, in history, when Draupadi was molested, she took a vow for revenge... but this woman, she lost everything, but still sold her dignity for the sake of power,” Mughalsarai MP Sadhana Singh had said, in an apparent reference to the BSP-SP alliance. “We strongly condemn Mayawati ji. A woman who gulped down insults for comfort and power is a blot on womankind.”

Later, the National Commission for Women issued a notice to Singh for her derogatory remarks.