Hindu terror: BJP accuses Congress of doublespeak

NEW DELHI: Stepping up its attack on Congress on the issue of Hindu terror, BJP today accused the opposition party of doublespeak, and said while in India they blamed right wing Hindu groups for the Samjhauta Express blast, in the United Nations they held groups based in Pakistan responsible for it.

Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters here, Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said senior UPA ministers had coined the term though they maintained that it was never used in Parliament.

She said Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had told a foreign diplomat on a "prime dinner table" that Hindu terror is more dangerous than LeT.

When the UN was working on banning terror organisations internationally, New Delhi had given an input that Pakistan- based organisations had carried out the incident on the train, she said.

"It cannot be that two different groups working on the same incident... Can both work together? Is it conceivable?" she quipped.

When asked that former Home Secretary RK Singh, who is now a BJP Lok Sabha member, was part of the team which coined the term 'saffron terror', she said, "It is the political representatives that have been propagating the term."

When pressed further, she said she will ask Singh about the details. "...he is accessible to you," she said.

On Friday, a war of words had broken out between the government and the Congress making the prospects of breaking parliamentary logjam further bleak.

Even as the Congress flayed Home Minister Rajnath Singh for accusing former Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde coining the term "Hindu terrorism," the BJP stood by its Home Minister, saying the Congress had weakened India's resolve against terrorism by coining a new term of "Hindu terrorism."