Mumbai is pride of Maharashtra, likening it to PoK is blasphemy: Congress

Mumbai is "pride" of Maharashtra and India and to demean the city by likening it to PoK is "blasphemy", All India Congress Committee secretary Ashish Dua said on Monday

Mumbai is "pride" of Maharashtra

and India and to demean thecity by likening it to Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) is "blasphemy", All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary Ashish Dua said on Monday without naming actress Kangana Ranaut.

Taking to Twitter a day after Ranaut met Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at Raj Bhavan here over partial razing of her office by the Mumbai civic body, Dua also said the governor's office is "not for politics".

"#Mumbai is pride of #Maharashtra & entire India. This is a city which has realised dreams of millions without prejudice or discrimination. To demean it by comparing with PoK is blasphemy. Guv office is not for politics," Dua tweeted.

He said the BJP should refrain from "dividing citizens on the basis of region".

Ranaut had said that she met Koshyari to apprise him about "injustice" done to her.

The Congress is one of the ruling constituents of the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghahdi (MVA) dispensation; the other being the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Earlier in the day, the actress, who left Mumbai for her native Himachal Pradesh, reiterated her PoK barb, which had riled the Sena and other members of the MVA.

Ranaut has tweeted that she has been terrorised with "constant attacks and abuses" and that her analogy comparing the Maharashtra capital with PoK was "bang on".

The Sena and Ranaut have been at loggerheads ever since the actress compared Mumbai to PoK after Sena MP Sanjay Raut asked her not to return to Mumbai.

Raut had targeted Ranaut after the latter expressed her distrust in the Mumbai Police in view of actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death.