External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Sunday hit out at Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) prime ministerial candidate for the language he used against Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, and said the Gujarat Chief Minister should not turn uncivil while targetting the ruling party.
"Is this a decent and civil way to speak? To call someone a 'chirkut', to call someone a 'shehzada', to call someone something else-is it proper. Rahul Gandhi is a leader of the ruling party.... If we do not express respect for each other, where will the democracy go?" Khurshid asked.
Khurshid also asked Modi not to belittle the Gandhi scion's experiences constantly at his rallies, while consistently emphasizing on his own success story of becoming BJP's prime ministerial candidate from his days as a tea seller.
"God has graced him that he has gone from a tea vendor to where he is today, but he shouldn't say that Rahul Gandhi's has been born with a golden spoon and his experiences have been limited to that, while he himself is a man who has seen the ground realities. We have seen how much he (Narendra Modi) is for the poor. We are only saying that is it appropriate for a Prime Ministerial aspirant to speak like this?" Khurshid asked.
Meanwhile, earlier today, Narendra Modi said the moment the Congress Party puts an end to their practice of dynastic politics, he would stop addressing their Vice President Rahul Gandhi as 'shehzada' (prince), and alleged that the Centre's ruling party was immersed in politics of opportunism.
The External Affairs Minister also backed the Congress vice president on his controversial statement that Muzaffarnagar communal riot victims were being contacted by Pakistani agents, and said that Rahul Gandhi was rightly cautioning the people at a sensitive and vulnerable time.
"What Rahul Gandhi said is correct and you must report that. Rahul Gandhi has cautioned people, who are in pain, who are vulnerable in wake of the riots to not be swayed at a time in which people would want to take undue advantage of their situation," he said here today.
Maintaining his claim that the BJP has been igniting communal fires across the country, Gandhi earlier on Thursday revealed at a rally in Indore that 10 to 15 Muslim boys, who had lost their families in the recent riots in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, are being contacted by Pakistani intelligence.
"Day before yesterday, a police officer came to my office. He told me that in Muzaffarnagar there are 10 to 15 Muslim boys, who have lost their brothers and sisters in the riots. He told me that people from the Pakistan intelligence agencies are starting to talk to surviving victims of Muzaffarnagar. The police officer told me that he is trying to dissuade the youth," Gandhi said in Indore.
Targetting the BJP, the Congress number two alleged that the opposition party is solely interested in gathering votes, while it is left to the ruling party to cool down tempers that arise in the aftermath of communal violence.
Violence broke out in the Kawal area of Muzaffarnagar on August 27, when members of a community returning from a panchayat meeting in Naglabadhod, three kilometres from Kawal, clashed with members of another community.
