Rahul tears into Modi, BJP hits back hard

NEW DELHI: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday launched an all-out attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of promoting divisive politics, creating space for terrorism in Kashmir and ruining the economy.

"Hatred, anger and violence and the politics of polarisation has raised its ugly head in India today," he said while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Congress vice president also admitted said that dynastic politics is a "problem" for most political parties in India but maintained that a large number of people in his party did not have a dynastic background.

At the same time, he said that a person's background does not determine his capabilities.

The BJP slammed Rahul Gandhi as a "failed dynast" and failed politician after the Congress vice president defended dynastic politics during a public event in the United States.

Within hours of Gandhi's speech, Union minister Smriti Irani blasted him at a press conference, saying his admission that the Congress had turned arrogant since 2012 was a "big political confession" and a reflection on Sonia Gandhi, who was and remains its president.

"A failed dynast chose to speak about his failed political journey in the US... the country (India) is not listening so he is speaking somewhere else," Irani said at a BJP press conference.

It must be the first time that a Congress vice president chose to taunt his party president and it is for the party to introspect on this, she said.

"The fact that Rahul Gandhi chose to belittle the prime minister is not a surprise but expected... It is an indication of his failed strategy. The people of the country where he leads a political party no longer support him so he is expressing his pain abroad," she said.

She also challenged him to a public debate "without a handwritten script" over his criticism of the Modi government.