Congress MP uses movie dialogue to taunt Modi

Panaji, March 26 (IANS) Shantaram Naik, Goa's only Rajya Sabha MP, Wednesday used a dialogue from Bollywood blockbuster "Sholay" to put in context, what he called, "the selective targeting" of senior BJP leaders by Narendra Modi.

"It is nothing but Narendra Modi saying 'chun chun ke maarunga' to all the party stalwarts like L.K. Advani, Jaswant Singh and Murli Manohar Joshi. Modi is actually doing what Dharmendra had threatened to do in 'Sholay'," Naik told a press conference.

The punchy line with aggressive overtones is one of cine star Dharmendra's most popular dialogues from the 1970s film.

Naik was referring the internal conflict between the Bharatiya Janata Party, where senior leaders like Joshi, Advani and Singh have expressed differences over ticket allocation.

While Joshi has been denied the Varanasi seat and offered Kanpur, Advani's reported interest in contesting from Bhopal has been over-ruled by the party, which has asked the former deputy prime minister to re-contest for the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat.

Singh, whose bickering with the party was in the public domain, has decided to contest independently from the Barmer constituency, after he was denied a ticket by the party.

"Modi does not believe in respecting the old. This is the kind of disdain with which he treats elder politicians within his own party," Naik said.