No BJP leader can utter a word without Modi's nod: Congress

NEW DELHI: Congress today targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over controversial remarks made by BJP leaders, calling him a "dictator" without whose permission nobody can "utter a word".

"The government has a solo leader...(it is) dictatorship. No MP, whether he is a sadhu or a sadhvi, can utter a word without signal from him," Congress spokesman Shaktisinh Gohil said.

Several BJP leaders, including it Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath, were recently in news over making allegedly intemperate remarks. Adityanath had compared Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai carnage, over his "extreme intolerance" comment.

Before him, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya had triggered a row with a series of tweets in which he called Shah Rukh an "anti-national" and said that the actor's "soul" is in Pakistan though he lives in India. Under fire for the remark, he later withdrew the controversial tweets but asserted had there been intolerance in India, Shah Rukh would not have been the most popular actor after Amitabh Bachchan.

Gohil also hit back at the Prime Minister for his remarks made during Bihar poll campaign that Congress cannot lecture the NDA over "intolerance" after the 1984 riots, saying the party has already apologised for the anti-Sikh pogrom, while Narendra Modi is yet to express regret over the Gujarat riots.

Gohil told reporters that Modi was told by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to follow 'Raj Dharma' and claimed the Supreme Court had also asked him to quit if he could not protect people.

Gohil, a Congress leader from Gujarat and a strident critic of Modi, alleged the post-Godhra riots were "state sponsored".

The Congress spokesman claimed Rajiv Gandhi's controversial remark that when a 'big tree falls, the earth is bound to shake' was made when the situation was returning to normal after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination and the subsequent anti-Sikh riots.