Bengaluru, Oct 28(PTI): Both the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress seem to be digging into each other's past to attack each other ahead of all-important assembly polls in five states and the Lok Sabha elections next year.

Speaking at Bengaluru Literature Festival, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor recalled an old quote mentioned in a story published in 2012 where an unnamed Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) member had used a metaphor to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"There's an extraordinarily striking metaphor expressed by an unnamed RSS source to a journalist, - Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shivling, you can't remove him with your hand and you cannot hit it with a chappal either," Tharoor said.

Tharoor was referring to a quote by an RSS member mentioned in a story on Narendra Modi in 2012 in the Caravan magazine. The 7-page story titled The Emperor Uncrowned ended with this quote from a local RSS leader.

Tharoor has recently published his book "The Paradoxical Prime Minister" which is critical of the dispensation under Narendra Modi.

"If Narendra Modi can be stopped in the next elections then India should still be able to protect its pluralist way of life and the longer he continues as Prime Minister, the greater the danger that the extent of India`s "Modi-fication" will be irreversible," the Congress MP had recently said.

The former Union minister had said that with more mob lynchings, proliferation of gau rakshaks, ghar-wapsi, love-jihad and a dramatic rise in communal violence, "the elephant in the room" could no longer be ignored.

In his book, Tharoor has written about his vision for the new India. "The New India I want is a country where you won't get lynched for the food you eat, marginalised for the faith you hold dear, criminalised for the person you love and imprisoned for making use of fundamental rights guaranteed by your own Constitution," the book states.

Not just the Congress, the BJP too is digging skeletons from the past, this election season. BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav on Sunday trained guns at the former Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government by recalling a faux pas that took place on a world platform in 2011.

He recalled the incident in 2011 when the then external affairs minister SM Krishna inadvertently read out a Portuguese Minister's speech at the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York.