Stepping up its offensive on the Ram Sethu ssue, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday demanded immediate dismissal of all Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ministers in the Centre if it fails to persuade Chief Minister M Karunanidhi to withdraw his "blasphemous" remarks on Lord Ram.

The demand was made by party chief Rajnath Singh in his inaugural address at the party's national executive in Bhopal.

"DMK is part of the United Progressive Alliance-led coalition and it is the duty of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images] and UPA chaiperson Sonia Gandhi [Images] to persuade Karunanidhi to withdraw the derogatory, offensive and blasphemous remarks on Lord Ram," he said from his prepared speech.

Rajnath said if Karunanidhi did not withdraw his remarks, all DMK ministers should be dismissed forthwith.

Rajnath spoke at length on the Ram Sethu issue and said that not even Aurangzeb or the Britishers ever questioned the existence of Ram.

Karunanidhi's statement on Lord Ram was "ugly and deserves to be condemned in the strongest language possible," Rajnath said.

There was no scientific evidence to show that the Adam's bridge (Ram Sethu) was a man-made bridge and the Centre should go ahead with the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project without any delay, Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat said.

Coming to the support of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on his remarks on Ram, he said: "In this country, there are people with religious beliefs and people like us. It is not wrong to express an opinion."

"It is not proper to stop a major scheme in the name of Ram Sethu," he said.

Replying to a query on a possible change of alignment, he said it was not a question of alignment, since it was the BJP-led government which sanctioned the project and they were trying to gain political mileage out of it, he said.

If the BJP thought it could gain political mileage from the issue, they were mistaken, he said adding, in the UP they tried to exploit religious sentiments and failed.

Declining to say anything on the Indo-US nuclear deal, he said he did not want to say anything further.

When asked about the meeting of CPI-M leaders in Chennai on Friday, he said that as all the top leaders of the party were in Chennai, they had a meeting and there was nothing unusual about it.