BJP slams Digvijaya Singh over communal riot charge

The BJP Wednesday accused Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh of raising the communal riot bogey to garner votes of a particular community in the Lok Sabha election due next year.

"His statement yesterday (Tuesday) that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) planned communal riots to gain in the Lok Sabha election is a clear indication that the Congress was hatching plans for riots to blame the BJP," Karnataka BJP spokesperson C.T. Ravi told reporters here.

Singh had said at a meeting of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee here Tuesday that BJP planned communal riots in all Congress-ruled states to gain in the Lok Sabha election.

Charging that it was Congress' habit to organise communal riots, Ravi listed communal incidents that had taken place in Karnataka when that party was in power.

The BJP was in power in Karnataka for the first time in 2008-13. It lost to the Congress in the assembly polls held May 5.