Nirmala Sitharaman slams Rahul Gandhi's 'polarising' remark

COIMBATORE: Congress should speak after some "introspection" and look at its own record of how it has led the country to "communal politics", Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said here tonight slamming Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP of "polarising the country".

"Who is talking about polarising? The vice president of the Congress party, which is known for appeasement policy and the party under which this country has seen record number of communal riots?," Sitharaman, the Union Commerce Minister, said at a press conference here tonight.

On the allegation made by Gandhi in Mandya in Karnataka, she said people who had "perpetrated communal riots have gone unpunished till today and the death of the number of innocents has been the highest even till today."

"The perpetrators of Bhagalpur have not been punished, the perpetrators of Delhi anti-Sikh riots have not been punished. I can go back to the days of the Congress party which was in power in Gujarat when more people lost their lives than ever before," she said.

"Congress should speak after some introspection," she said and added that "they should not continue talking without looking at their own record of how they have polarised, led this country to communal politics."

Dismissing the Prime Minister's remarks on the Dadri lynching incident, Gandhi had accused Modi and BJP of "polarising the country" and having a "strategy" to make Hindus and Muslims fight with each other.

On Bihar elections, the minister claimed that BJP and allies would get full majority and end the 'jungle raj' there.