New Delhi, Feb. 1 -- A comment by senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on President Droupadi Murmu kicked up a political row on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi hit out at the Congress and the Rashtrapati Bhavan said the remark hurt the dignity of the high office.

After the President's address opened the budget session of Parliament on Friday morning, Gandhi was asked by reporters outside the House about Murmu'snearly hour-long speech. "The President was getting very tired by the end...She could hardly speak, poor thing," the former Congress chief was heard saying in clips in what appeared to be a reference to how long the address was. Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi described the speech as "boring" in one of the clips. To be ...