Modi hit nadir of pettiness: Punjab CM

Khatkar Kalan (Punjab), May 6 (IANS) Taking on Narendra Modi over his remarks on late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday said the Prime Minister had hit the nadir of pettiness in his desperation to stay in power.

Faced with imminent defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, power-hungry Modi had lost all sense of decency and proportion in his election campaign, reducing it to a shameless mockery of public norms, Amarinder Singh told reporters.

Modi's remarks were "outright despicable and reflective of his loathsome mindset", said the Chief Minister, adding that the universal criticism the Prime Minister had faced over his comments showed that no sane individual or political institution that looked at elections as a serious democratic process could condone such "malicious and baseless propaganda".

Amarinder Singh, who was Rajiv Gandhi's senior in school, described the former Prime Minister as one of the most decent, humble and honest men he had ever known.

Gandhi had nothing but unwavering love for India and would never, in his wildest imagination, have even thought of cheating the country or its people, he added.

"Rajiv sacrificed his life for the country and our current Prime Minister, unmindful of the dignity of the chair he has held for the past five years, deems it fit to drag the former PM's name into what he has reduced to a shameful saga of low-level electioneering," said Amarinder Singh.

Even Modi's own party leader, the late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, always had good things to say about Rajiv Gandhi, the Chief Minister said, pointing to Vajpayee's statement on how Rajiv Gandhi had saved his life by including him in a delegation to the UN so that he could get his kidney problem treated in New York.