In a fresh war of words, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday hit out at Narendra Modi dubbing him a compulsive liar and an encounter chief minister.
In Chennai, Chidambaram said, “Mr Modi is a compulsive liar. There was no recount in Sivaganga. He knows that but he still lies and continues to make this false statement — one of the many false statements made by him. If he insists on calling me recounting minister, I can call him encounter chief minister.”
The attack came after Modi’s constant referral to Chidambaram as recounting minister in his election rallies. The jibe comes after Chidambaram’s victory in the 2009 Lok Sabha election from the Sivaganga constituency in Tamil Nadu by a margin of around 3,500 votes was mired in controversy.
After Chidambaram opted out of the polls, his son Karti has been given the Sivaganga seat by the Congress. Reacting to that Modi, who is on a two-day trip to Tamil Nadu, said,” In Tamil Nadu there is a Congress leader — recounting minister. He is so afraid that he ran away from elections.”
Continuing his tirade against Rahul Gandhi, whom he once again described as Shehzada, Modi questioned the Congress leader’s notion of poverty, saying he was ‘born with a golden spoon’.
He also took the opportunity to heap praise on Abdul Kalam, former president, who was born in this town, saying ‘he was a great son of India’ and lauded his contribution to space science.
Earlier, addressing a rally in Erode, he took a dig at former Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan and without naming her, said a woman Congress leader from the state was responsible for delaying many infrastructural projects in the country including in Tamil Nadu.