BJP warns Congress over playing communal card'

New Delhi: Cautioning the Congress that it is “playing a dangerous game” by playing the communal card, the BJP on Friday said the Opposition party will be “solely responsible” if any disharmony played out between now and the 2019 general elections.

Citing a media report on Mr Gandhi’s recent interaction with some Muslim intellectuals where the Congress president purportedly stated that his party is a Muslim party and that the Muslims are the next dalits, senior BJP leader and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked Mr Gandhi to put out plain and clear what transpired during his interaction with the Muslim intellectuals, which the ruling party claimed was “not a constructive engagement”.

The Congress, however, dismissed the media report and said that it was a party of 132 crore Indians and like “a rainbow of which all religions and all castes are a part”. The Opposition party also hit back at the BJP saying when governance fails, rumours take precedence.

Quoting from the media report, Ms Sitharaman also questioned whether there was a certain agenda behind coining the term “Hindu terror” by the Congress and said that Mr Gandhi was in a course correction mode after his party claimed that he was a “janeudhari Hindu” before the Karntaka polls and he is now claiming that Congress is a party of Muslims before the 2019 polls.

The BJP claimed that Mr Gandhi’s reported statements were against the fundamentals of the Indian Constitution and alleged that the Congress wants to divide the country on communal lines ahead of the general polls.

“It (the Congress) is pla-ying up the card of religion... It may lead to the kind of division and communal disharmony which prevailed during the partition in 1947... The Congr-ess would be solely respo-nsible if any disharmony plays out between now and 2019 polls,” she alleged.