New Delhi: Narendra Modi, the BJP's candidate for Prime minister, wants "politics of the gutter, of invective and abuse and counter abuse, of innuendo and insinuation," said union minister Jairam Ramesh to NDTV today.
The BJP shredded that assessment. Party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted, "Politics of gutter" Mr Jairam Ramesh? Where were you when '
maut ka saudagar' was used? 'Gutter snipe' & many more again from your stable?
Her tweet referenced Congress president Sonia Gandhi's controversial and much-flayed description of Mr Modi as "
maut ka saudagar" or "merchant of death" in 2007, when campaigning for the state election in Gujarat, which the Congress lost. Mr Modi has been described by Congress leaders as a divisive leader after the 2002 riots in his home state, in which over a thousand people were killed, most of them Muslims.
Another BJP leader Prakash Javadekar said that Mr Ramesh's statement to NDTV today telegraphs the government's inability to answer the questions raised by Mr Modi about its economic and other failures.
Though an array of senior ministers have been attacking Mr Modi, the Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, who is leading his party's campaign for the national election, has not taken him on directly in recent rallies.
When asked why, Mr Ramesh told NDTV, "I do not think Rahul Gandhi should be getting into a
tu-tu-main-main with Modi."