New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party Monday said those appreciating Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi were becoming "victim of the worst kind of vote bank politics" and questioned the "silence" of the Congress over communal riots in Assam.

Addressing media a day after Congress MP Vijay Darda was pulled up for remarks lauding Modi, which he later retracted, BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad called it a campaign against the Gujarat chief minister.

"Whether it is a Congress MP (Darda), Delhi chief minister (Sheila Dikshit), or an editor (Shahid Siddiqui) related to the Samajwadi Party, whoever appreciates the development and good administration of Gujarat becomes the victim of the worst kind of vote bank politics," Prasad said.

He gave the example of Urdu daily Nayi Duniya s editor Shahid Siddiqui, with whom the Samajwadi Party dissociated after he interviewed Modi, and former Darul Uloom vice-chancellor Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi who was forced to quit from the Islamic seminary for praising Modi s governance.

"From BJP, we condemn this victimisation of those who appreciate Modi," he said. He also questioned the silence of the Congress over the Assam communal violence. "The people who have been criticising Gujarat day and night for ten years are maintaining a conspicuous silence as far as Assam riots are concerned," he added. Darda, the Congress Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra, called Modi a "saint" and a "tiger" at a function in Ahmedabad, but retracted the remark later.