Modi suffering from amnesia: Manish Tewari

Taking a dig at Narendra Modi, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari on Sunday said then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had reminded the Gujarat chief minister about 'Raj Dharma' in the wake of the 2002 riots in the state.

Reacting to comments by Modi in his speech at BJP's National Council meeting in New Delhi, he also said it was under the Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi that the country had conducted its first nuclear test in 1974.

"AMNESIA. Is it not true that Vajpayee reminded a certain CM about Raj Dharma in 2002? What did Vajpayee attribute their 2004 defeat to," Tewari asked on social networking site Twitter.

Following the defeat of NDA in 2004 polls, Vajpayee had blamed that violence in Gujarat as one of the reasons that led to the electoral loss.

"FACTS -- Indira Gandhi carried out PNE (peaceful nuclear explosion) in 74, successive Cong governments nurtured strategic programme and Manmohan Singh dismantled nuclear apartheid," Tewari said.

Maintaining that Vajpayee had shown what a single leader could do, Modi had said while addressing the BJP conclave on Sunday that it was under Vajpayee's leadership that India had conducted nuclear tests on May 11 and May 13, 1998 despite international pressure and stood up to the sanctions imposed against it thereafter.