Ghost of Gujarat riots haunting Narendra Modi: Congress

Stung by Narendra Modi's charge that UPA was misusing CBI to target political opponents, Congress today had a dig at the BJP's prime ministerial candidate saying it showed the ghost of the 2002 Gujarat riots was haunting him.

"It seems the probe into the Gujarat riots is haunting the Chief Minister...The accomplices who are in jail have started speaking and that may be the reason that he is seeing CBI everywhere. CBI is remembered only by those who are involved in some crime. I do not know whether he is or not," party spokesman Raj Babbar told reporters here.

He said this when asked to respond to Modi's charge that the coming elections were not being contested by Congress but by CBI, suggesting that the ruling party was misusing the premier investigative agency to target its opponents.

On Modi invoking Mahatma Gandhi's name to remind people that the Father of the Nation wanted Congress to be disbanded after Independence, he said, "The thinking which made Modi the PM candidate is the same thinking which is accused of assassinating the Mahatma."

He said Modi "neither reads nor comprehends" and took a jibe at the Gujarat Chief Minister over the cold vibes shared between him and his party patriarch L K Advani at Bhopal rally yesterday.

"The senior leader of his very own party, whose feet he was touching, had turned away his head four five times from him. The same leader had also written a letter that BJP originally conceived by them no longer exists," Babbar said.

In his resignation letter to party President Rajnath Singh who had announced Modi's appointment as Chairman of BJP's election campaign committee in June, Advani had rued that BJP was no longer the "same idealistic party" created by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya, Nanaji Deshmukh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Babbar said perhaps Modi "does not have knowledge" and his party leaders have not taught him even the language.