PM Modi is wearing different masks: Congress

New Delhi: Congress on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of wearing different "masks" and giving "tacit approval" to communalise the situation in the wake of Dadri lynching incident.

"The way Ministers in the Modi government are raising the communal temperature in the wake of the Dadri incident and still the Prime Minister is silent suggests his tacit admission to their actions" party spokesperson Shobha Oza told reporters.

"The way things are developing, right to life will have to be demanded," she said. Oza noted that President Pranab Mukherjee has emphasized that the core values of diversity, tolerance and plurality of Indian civilization must be kept in mind and cannot be allowed to be wasted.

"The Prime Minister is wearing different masks. He is giving tacit approval to communalise the situation in the wake of Dadri and speaks the language of development in poll-bound Bihar," she said.

Hitting back at Modi for calling JD(U)-RJD-Congress as 'mahaswarth bandhan" (alliance of big opportunism), she said BJP ally Ram Vilas Paswan had resigned from Vajpayee Cabinet in the aftermath of the Gujarat communal riots while Upendra Kushwaha was a JD(U) MP.

Oza also accused Modi of giving a veiled threat to people of Bihar that if they failed to elect BJP to power, they will be denied the Rs 1.25 lakh crore package from the Centre.

People of Bihar, she claimed, knew that Prime Minister promises the moon before the elections, but delivers little after getting elected. She said that the problem of Rs 2,000 crore in arrears of cane growers in the state could have got resolved if the seven

central Ministers from Bihar had shown commitment in the past 16 months.

She said that the Prime Minister is not speaking a word on the issue of rising prices of essential commodities which has hit hard the common man. She claimed that Ram Vilas Paswan, who is the Food Minister at the Centre, also hails from Bihar but was "doing

precious little to bring down prices at a time when tur dal has become Rs 200 per kg and onions Rs 80".

Modi also came under attack from the Congress chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala who demanded an apology from the Prime Minister as well as BJP and RSS alleging that they have an "anti-dalit, anti-ST and anti-backward classes mindset". In a statement, Surjewala alleged that the Prime Minister is "carrying forward the RSS ideology of denying social justice and subjugating these deprived sections- Dalits, Scheduled Tribes,Backward Classes" instead of projecting himself as their messiah".

"We demand an apology from Shri Narendra Modi, Bhartiya Janata Party, RSS for their anti Dalit-ST BC policies, decisions and mindset," Surjewala said at a time when the Bihar polls is turning out to be a keen contest with RJD chief Lalu Prasad even calling it a fght between backwards and upper castes.