Mumbai: India’s minister of Agriculture Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has hit out at BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, saying he needed to be treated in a mental hospital for talking rubbish.

“Modi must have become deranged as he talks rubbish and needs to be treated in a mental hospital,” Pawar said at a rally in Ghanswangi, Jalna, whilst campaigning for NCP candidate Vijay Bhamble, adding that he should be treated in a good hospital once the elections are over.

As campaign for India’s general elections gets intense, wars of words have become even more intense.

Pawar’s attack was apparently a response to Modi’s earlier barb in Amravati where the BJP candidate had said, “The Agriculture Minister is from here (Maharashtra), yet he is unable to save farmers. He has time to talk on cricket but not on dying farmers. Let us have an NCP-free India and Maharashtra.”

Amravati is one of the 11 districts of Vidarbha where debt-ridden farmers have been committing suicide for almost a decade even as Pawar has held the post of agriculture minister during this long period.

Of the Congress, Modi said, “In 1857, the call was to free India from the British and in 2014 the call is to free India from Congress. Be it employment or farmers, they are just not bothered. Sadly, these people in Congress do not know what poverty is.”

Pawar had recently said that Modi should not be held responsible for the 2002 riots in Gujarat since he had been given a clean chit by the court.

But in Jalna, he brought up the Gujarat communal riots issue and accused Modi of being indifferent to the plight of victims of communal violence and described Modi as being “dangerous to the country.”

He said members of the minority community and Congress ex-MP Ahsan Jaffri were killed in Gulbarga Society, which is only 20km from Ahmedabad where the carnage took place “but Modi neither visited the victims’ family nor bothered about them.”

“Modi is talking about Congress Mukt (free) Bharat. Does Modi know the sacrifice and contribution of Congress in freedom struggle?” he asked. “Because of Congress’ ideology, we got freedom.”

However, it was not only Pawar and Modi who were trading jibes. Pawar’s nephew, Ajit Pawar, who is the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, condemned Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief, for his poor leadership skills which he described as “tottering.”

In spite of the Sena having control of the Mumbai’s civic body, “they have not been able to set up Balasaheb Thackeray’s memorial,” he said at a campaign rally in Osmanabad.