Cong a sinking ship without captain: Shivraj

BJP leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Wednesday that the Congress was like a sinking ship without a captain.

"No one knows who is the president of the Congress party today. It is like a sinking ship whose captain is running away and leaving it in the lurch," Chouhan, who came to launch the party's membership drive in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district. told reporters.

"Congress president has become 'Rannchhod ji' Gandhi," he said. 'Rannchhod" refers to someone who has run away from the battlefield.

Chouhan, who is the BJP vice-president and head of its membership campaign, claimed that the "sorry state of affairs" in the Congress had stunned even senior leaders within its ranks.

He said the BJP's landslide victory in the Lok Sabha election was a triumph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "extraordinary popularity" and credited the party workers for the victory.

"But it's not the time to relax and celebrate because the best of the BJP is yet to come. We have to expand the organisation in states where we are not in power, including West Bengal, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

Chouhan started the party's membership campaign from a Dalit-dominated segment of the district.