Bengaluru, 19 April

Reacting to criticism over his remarks on the bifurcation of Telangana, Karnataka BJP MP Tejasvi Surya said on Sunday that "I feel the Congress party is a party of illiterates. They should go and listen to what I have said and try to understand it… I do not want to justify or glorify their ignorance with a response.”

Congress workers in Telangana had protested Surya’s remarks earlier, where he compared the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh to the 1947 Partition of India—a remark they claim disparaged the 60-year-old statehood movement, and demanded an apology.

Surya on Thursday said his statement in Parliament during the debate on the Women's Reservation Amendment Bill was being "mischievously twisted".

Surya slammed the way the then UPA government bifurcated undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2014.