Now it's BJP vs Cong over Rushdie

The BJP on Monday dubbed the row over Salman Rushdie's absence at the Jaipur Literary Festival as a case of "match fixing" between intelligence agencies and "jehadis" to enable the Congress to gain political mileage in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The Congress reacted by saying the BJP was trying to see everything from the "prism of communalism".

The BJP on Monday dubbed the row over Salman Rushdie's absence at the Jaipur Literary Festival as a case of "match fixing" between intelligence agencies and "jehadis" to enable the Congress to gain political mileage in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The Congress reacted by saying the BJP was trying to see everything from the "prism of communalism".

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"It is a clear case of match fixing between intelligence agencies and jehadis in which the Congress government of Rajasthan played a supportive and active role," BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Prasad said while Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot insisted that his government had received six messages from the IB that "paid assassins" from Mumbai could target him, "Maharashtra DGP has said they had not provided any inputs to Rajasthan."

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, "BJP is playing a dangerous game if it is saying the Rajasthan government should not have shared with or alerted the home ministry or agencies about inputs." He said the BJP would have attacked the government, if anything untoward had happened.