Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi [Images] has said that the Congress was behaving like the 'B' team of the erstwhile Muslim League and that the party will take the country to doom if it continued with its policy of minority appeasement.

Modi lashed out at the Congress while addressing a public meeting held in Nagpur on Tuesday evening at the end of the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign against terrorism. The Congress was making the same demands that the Muslim League made before independence and which ultimately led to India's partition on religious lines, Modi said.

If the Congress continued on these lines, then the day was not far off when the country witnessed another partition based on religion, Modi warned.

Opposing the move on reservation on the basis of religion, Modi said that the demand had first been made by the Muslim League. However, the members of the Constituent Assembly had opposed the demand were against reservation based on religion, Modi said.

The Congress should take a lesson from the opinion of the members of the Constituent Assembly, because there was nobody from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the Jan Sangh on the body, he said.

The delay by the Centre in making a decision on the mercy petition from the family of Mohammed Afzal, facing the death sentence in the Parliament attack case, came in for criticism from Modi.

"When the family of General A S Vaidya's killers filed a mercy petition, the government made a decision to reject it within 11 hours. I do not understand why this government is taking so long. There is nothing wrong in seeking mercy, but the decision must be made fast," he said.

Modi said the decision by the United Progressive Alliance government to scrap Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act was the height of appeasement. Nobody in India celebrated, but the people in Pakistan and members of terrorist organisations burst crackers and distributed sweets when POTA was repealed, he said, wondering how the government would tackle terrorism with this kind of attitude.

Asserting that the only way of fighting terrorism was a bullet for a bullet, Modi said that India must lead the global fight against terrorism and not rely on others to tackle the problem.

The Gujarat chief minister spoke at length about the measures that his government had initiated for the benefit of the farmers in his state. Thanks to the efforts, traders from China and France [Images] were competing to buy cotton from farmers in Gujarat, ensuring a high price for the cultivator, he said.

-- CINS