BJP parliamentarian Nishikant Dubey has made it clear he stands by his vitriolic comments against the Supreme Court and a former chief election commissioner, with his party so far eschewing disciplinary action despite distancing itself from his salvo at the top court.

Dubey mocked Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday as someone in “chains” for indirectly questioning the four-time MP’s comment that the Supreme Court was “inciting religious wars in the country”.

Earlier, Dubey had defended himself for calling former poll panel chief S.Y. Quraishi a “Muslim commissioner” rather than an “election commissioner” by arguing he was merely endorsing the views of party general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh, the RSS representative in the BJP.

Dubey is widely seen as a hatchet man who makes himself useful to the party brass by targeting opponents and critics with scurrilous remarks that they cannot themselves afford to mouth.

While BJP president J.P. Nadda had delivered a mild warning to Dubey on Saturday for his attack on the apex court, Quraishi has been left to defend himself against what he has described as “hateful politics”.

Dubey targeted Sarma for his long post on X that referred to Nadda’s stand and said “the BJP has consistently upheld the independence and dignity of the judiciary as a cornerstone of India’s democracy”. Sarma went on to accuse the Congress of repeatedly insulting the judiciary.

Dubey replied to the chief minister by quoting an Urdu couplet by Fani Badayuni – ironical, considering Rightwing leaders’ allergy to Muslims and Urdu.

“Life is a compulsion and there is no way out of this compulsion. Alas, this imprisonment doesn’t require prison or chains,” the couplet says.

A senior BJP leader, Kailash Vijayvargiya, seemed to obliquely support Dubey’s broadside against the top court, in the garb of the advice that “sometimes, one should avoid speaking the truth”.

“The party has come out with the guidelines and I am with it. And, sometimes one should avoid speaking the truth... because everything has a boundary,” Vijayvargiya, a minister in Madhya Pradesh and the BJP’s former Bengal minder, told PTI on Sunday.

“Nishikant Dubey is my younger brother and he should avoid making such comments publicly.”

Dubey’s attack on the top court came two days after it had red-flagged some of the provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act.

Quraishi hits back

Quraishi responded to Dubey on Monday, without naming him, by saying some people were using religious identities as a staple for their politics of hate.

“I served on the constitutional post of election commissioner to the best of my ability and had a long and fulfilling career in the IAS. I believe in an idea of India where an individual is defined by his or her talents and contributions and not by their religious identities,” Quraishi told PTI.

“But I guess, for some,religious identities are a staple to forward their hateful politics. India has, is and will always stand up and fight for its constitutional institutions and principles.”

On his X handle, Quraishi quoted George Bernard Shaw, but without referring to Dubey: “‘I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides. The pig likes it’ - George Bernard Shaw.”

BJP leader Santosh, whom Dubey has cited to defend his own remarks on Quraishi, had earlier castigated the former CEC for his post that said the amended Waqf Act was “undoubtedly a blatantly sinister/ evil plan of the govt to grab Muslim lands”.

“Just remember that this man once headed the Election Commission of India. The Punya aggregated by our ancestors might be so huge that we still breathe democracy in spite of all these characters,” Santosh was quoted as saying to a newspaper.

“Land grabbing was the aim of the ‘Wakf by user’ clause, Quraishi Saab.”