BK Hariprasad said the Pulwama attack was a failure of the PM Narendra Modi government
BK Hariprasad, Congress parliamentarian from Karnataka, has stirred a controversy with his "match-fixing" comments on the Pulwama suicide bombing while attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"(Union Minister) Ravi Shankar Prasad should clarify whether there is any match-fixing between Pakistan and Narendra Modi. Without their knowledge this Pulwama incident should not have taken place. If you look at the chain of events that has taken place after Pulwama, it looks like Narendra Modi had a match-fixing with the people of Pakistan," Mr Hariprasad told reporters on Thursday as he reacted to the Union Law Minister's jibe on Congress president Rahul Gandhi over "stolen" Rafale papers.
His controversial comments came two days after another Congress leader, Digvijaya Singh, termed the Pulwama terror attack an "accident", which drew strong criticism from the BJP.
"The government of Jammu and Kashmir has openly admitted that it's a total failure of intelligence that has resulted in Pulwama. They can detect beef in... Kerala House but they can't detect RDX on a sensitive National Highway. It shows it's a total failure of Narendra Modi's government," said Mr Hariprasad.
Karnataka BJP general secretary N Ravikumar said Mr Hariprasad's comments were "highly condemnable and irresponsible". "He should be ashamed of making such statements. Where had he mortgaged his brain before making such a statement?" the BJP leader said, according to news agency PTI.
Ravi Shankar Prasad said Congress has "lost all its moorings". "There is increasing evidence every day that under Rahul Gandhi, the Congress has lost all its moorings..." the BJP leader said.
BK Hariprasad is not new to giving controversial comments. In January, he mocked Amit Shah when the BJP president was admitted to AIIMS in Delhi for swine flu treatment. Mr Hariprasad had told reporters that Amit Shah got swine flu because he tried to destabilise the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government in Karnataka.
Forty Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber of the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed, whose chief Masood Azhar is roaming freely in the neighbouring country, detonated a mini-van filled with explosive beside a CRPF convoy on Jammu-Srinagar highway last month. India responded with an air strike on a JeM camp in Balakot, inside Pakistan.
With inputs from ANI and PTI