NEW DELHI, Sept 14: The chief minister of India’s border state of Gujarat, widely accused of masterminding the recent anti-Muslim pogroms there, accused the Congress party on Saturday of following President Pervez Musharraf.

President Musharraf this week slammed New Delhi at the United Nations over the massacre of innocent civilians in Gujarat.

However, what appeared to have escaped Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s claim, was the fact that Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, himself was quoted on Saturday as being embarrassed by the February killings in the western state, one of the country’s most prosperous.

The Press Trust of India quoted Chief Minister Narendra Modi as launching, during the second phase of his Bhartiya Janata Party’s controversial Gaurav Yatra (Journey of Pride), a scathing attack on the Congress for “speaking the language of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf”.

Starting the campaign from Jhajankar, associated with the low caste dalit saint Savianathji, Modi claimed that there was hardly any difference between the speeches of Congress leaders and the Pakistani President’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly, PTI said.

The Congress “had spread canards against the state throughout the world,” he alleged.

In an obvious attack on Congress state president Shankersinh Vaghela’s statement in which he is believed to have claimed that India had attacked Kargil in 1999, he said the Congress leader “should know the geography of the country that Kargil is a part of India and whoever spoke in this language was speaking against the interests of the country”.

The Chief Minister said it was height of shamelessness on Vaghela’s part to say that India could again start a war in Kargil to win election. Vaghela is a former member of the BJP and now a Congress chief ministerial hopeful.

However, in New York, deploring the recent communal violence in Gujarat, Prime Minister Vajpayee on Friday admitted that wherever he went the killings in the state were mentioned.

“A situation should not be created at home which forces us to bow our heads in shame before others [abroad],” Vajpayee said while speaking at a reception hosted in his honour by Indian Ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh. Seeing no justification for the Gujarat riots, Vajpayee said people of Gujarat would say that riots were not a new phenomenon in the state, but “this is not good.”—J.N