PTI
 
Bangalore, Apr 15: Favouring an end to personal attacks and mud-slinging in election campaigns, BJP on Wednesday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take 
the initiative on the issue.

"The Prime Minister should never get personally involved in any kind of smear campaign. I hope that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself would take an initiative to bring an end to this ongoing mud-slinging in the name of election campaigning," BJP President Rajnath Singh told reporters here.

Hitting out at the Congress-led UPA, he accused it of running a slanderous campaign to divert public attention from the real issues by levelling "baseless charges" against his party and its leadership.

In healthy democracy, launching personal attacks on Opposition leaders can never be appreciated and it is the moral obligation of the Opposition parties to exercise their right to constructive criticism of the incumbent government, he told reporters here.

"If the Opposition parties criticize the Prime Minister for his actions, then, instead of the Prime Minister defending himself, his own party should come forward to defend him," Singh said.

Singh's comments come amid escalating war of words between Manmohan Singh and BJP leader L K Advani whose oft-repeated charge against the Prime Minister of being "weak" has irked the Congress, which has launched an onslaught against the saffron party's Prime Ministerial candidate.