Congress releases CD of Uma Bharti slamming Modi as 'Vinash Purush'

New Delhi Mining out fresh ammunition for a prospective slugfest, Congress on Thursday released a three-year-old video clip in which senior party leader Uma Bharti has purportedly described Narendra Modi as an agent of destruction and his development claims of Gujarat as a "sham".

In the audio-visual presentation, Bharti who was then heading Bharatiya Janshakti Party after parting ways from BJP, says that she never saw "Hindus so frightened as in Gujarat" and that "Gujarat has become a fear stricken state".

The video CD, which Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi admitted was of a period when Bharti was not in the BJP, shows the firebrand leader debunking the development claims of the Gujarat Chief Minister as well his Hindutva pitch.

"I know him since 1973... He is not a Vikas Purush but a Vinash Purush. His claim of GDP growth and the uplift of people from the BPL to APL category is fake...In the last five years, Gujarat became a bigger debter. Gujarat got neither Ram nor Roti. It should be freed from the Vinash Purush.

"It is media which has made Modi so big, inflated the balloon. Since it is who have inflated the balloon, you will have to deflate it," Bharti says in the video.

Latching to the video clip, Singhvi said while it is true that Bharti was not in the BJP, when she said this the fact also remains that she was "not saying these things in the middle of an election speech" and hence there has to be some truth in what a senior leader like he says.

"If somebody does not make such remarks during election days, it means there is more truth in that... She has not rejected so far what she had said. These comments on the BJP's prime ministerial candidate were made by a senior leader like Bharti," Singhvi said.

Replying to questions on why the party released this CD in the middle of the election, Singvi said that though this was not the primary focus of the AICC press conference it does show that "there are thousands of such persons in the BJP, who consider him a dictator, a Vinash Purush and his claims about the development of Gujart are fake."