Cong playing dangerous game, creating partition-like situation: BJP

In a sharp attack on the Congress, the BJP said the opposition party was trying to create a "partition-like situation" in the country, and it would be solely responsible if any disharmony plays out between now and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Senior BJP leader and Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman also asked Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to clarify his remarks reported in an Urdu daily that his party was a Muslim party and that he was on a course-correction.

"This needs to be clarified, probably he wants to say that to call himself a Janeu-dhari (a Hindu who wears the sacred thread) was wrong, probably he wants to say now he is Muslim dhari," she said. "You can't be a Janeu-dhari at one point... a Muslim-dhari at another... This is playing with the people's trust."  Though the Congress has termed the report as a rumour, Sitharaman said, "The Congress would be solely responsible if any disharmony plays out between now and 2019 elections."  She claimed that the party was playing a dangerous game.

"It is playing up the card of religion and communal division. It may lead to the kind of division and communal disharmony which prevailed during the partition in 1947," Sitharaman said.  She said there is a pattern in which Congress leaders such as Shashi Tharoor are making statements, aimed to divide the country into religious lines. The statements such as of Rahul Gandhi's and by Shashi Tharoor about 'Hindu Pakistan' create a situation that the Congress party has to come clean on, Sitharaman said. "The Congress party's professing to minority appeasement has now reached a crescendo," she said  According to the BJP leader, Rahul also said in the news report that Muslims are next Dalits.