NEW DELHI, February 16: The war of abuses between the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party gathered momentum today, with the BJP calling Congress President ``mad'' for accusing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of being behind the Coimbatore bomb blasts.In an unusual move, the RSS broke its code of silence with RSS chief Rajendra Singh issuing a statement describing Kesri's charge as utterly ridiculous and irresponsible. He lambasted Kesri for insinuating that the RSS was involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.``Either he has lost his mental balance or he has no respect for the legal institutions of the country,'' he said, referring to the clean chit given by the then government to the RSS for the assassination.The Intelligence Bureau had warned the BJP four days ago that the threat to L K Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee has become graver, the BJP said today.Party general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu warned that there was a conspiracy to ``finish off'' BJP leaders by foreign forces inimical toIndia and that Coimbatore was not an isolated incident.The BJP's soft stand towards the DMK was obvious today. It stopped short of demanding the resignation of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu while accusing it of ``criminal negligence'' on the Coimbatore bomb blasts. Instead it lashed out at Kesri for pointing a finger at the RSS.Echoing the RSS chief, the BJP general secretary said,``Kesri seems to have gone mad. Only people in lunatic asylums can make such statements.''He accused the Congress of trying to incite communal tension by creating a wedge between Muslims and the BJP. Not Muslims but fundamentalist forces were behind the bomb blasts, he said. Coimbatore had become the hotbed of Pakistan's ISI activites, he added.Naidu said that a delegation of senior BJP leaders would visit Coimbatore on February 18 to study the situation before a decision is taken on whether to petition the Election Commission to postpone the elections in Coimbatore, currently slated for February 22.Meanwhile, theAndhra Pradesh unit of the BJP today demanded that Kesri be ``arrested and interrogated by an investigating agency to find out as to who were behind the incident.''Talking to mediapersons here, BJP spokesman V Rama Rao felt that a responsible person like Kesri, who is heading a national party, could not have made such an allegation without sufficient knowledge. Hence, investigating agencies should interrogate Kesri to elicit more details from him about the blasts in Coimbatore.
