Ahmedabad: Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Friday defended External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid calling BJP`s prime ministerial candidate "impotent" by claiming he had referred to Modi`s administrative incapacity.
"His context was different. He was not talking about physical incapacity. He was talking about administrative incapacity," Singhvi told PTI here today.
Singhvi was in Gujarat to appear at high court on behalf of JP Cement, in connection with a pasture land dispute petition.
"Khurshid used the term symbolically. It did not mean that in the literal or physical sense," Singhvi said.
On Modi`s recent attacks on Congress for allegedly neglecting the poor and the downtrodden for 60 years, he said, "Such remarks are being made everyday. Such remarks do not need any comments".
When asked to comment about some Congress MLAs in Gujarat switching over to the BJP, he said, "Such things are not new. This is an old practise".
On Tuesday, Khurshid had stoked a controversy by calling Modi "impotent" and insisted that he did nothing wrong, since there was no other appropriate word to describe him in the context of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Khurshid had said, "We don`t accuse you (Modi) of killing people. Hamara aarop hai ki tum `napunsak` (impotent) ho. (Our accusation is that you are impotent). You couldn`t stop the killers."?
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had yesterday said that he did not appreciate the "impotent" remark made by Khurshid against Narendra Modi in the context of the 2002 post-Godhara riots.
"I do not appreciate this kind of comment; this kind of language," Gandhi said disapproving Khurshid`s remark while speaking to reporters at AICC headquarters.
