BJP president Amit Shah today accused the Congress of dividing the nation and the society as he staged a sit-in at Hubballi near here to protest the recent washout of the Budget Session of Parliament.
Shah, on the sixth round of his campaigning in poll-bound Karnataka, was joined by BJP's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa, MPs Prahlad Joshi and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and other senior party functionaries.
Terming Parliament as the "temple of democracy" and "biggest panchayat in democracy", he alleged that because of the stand taken by the Congress and its president Rahul Gandhi, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha could not function.
Launching a scathing attack on the Congress, he said the logjam in Parliament for 22 days led to a loss of Rs 250 crore.
Usually the government runs away from a debate, but here the opposition was unwilling to discuss important issues, he said.
The BJP chief said the government was ready for a discussion but the opposition ran away from it, because "the Congress did not have the guts to discuss (issues)".
"We said we are ready to discuss the (Punjab National Bank) scam as none of our leaders or ministers was involved in it," he said.
"If the list of your (Congress) leaders involved in scams was to be brought out, the Congress would be empty," Shah said.
He said while running away from discussion, the Congress later got notices of no-confidence motion through smaller parties.
"We said we are ready to even discuss the no-confidence motion (if it was brought), because their no-confidence could not have done anything as the people of this country have confidence in Narendra Modi," he said.
Alleging that the Congress did not believe in democracy, Shah said, "Rahul baba is going around everywhere speaking about democracy. It looks like some NGO has handed over to him the word democracy."
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