AZAMGARH: Amid intense finger-pointing over the polarisation of political discourse in the lead-up to the assembly polls scheduled later this year and the 2019 Lok Sabha challenge, PM Narendra Modi taunted Congress on Saturday for being concerned more about Muslim men.Speaking at a public meeting after laying the foundation of Purvanchal Expressway, Modi referred to an article in an Urdu paper where Rahul Gandhi purportedly termed Congress a Muslim party in the presence of members of the minority community. Modi criticised the opposition for its stand against the bill to criminalise triple talaq. However, Congress had on Friday denied the story in the Urdu paper.“I have read in newspapers that the Congress president has said that it is a party of Muslims. I am not surprised by this since our former PM Manmohan Singh, too, had claimed that Muslims owned the first right on natural resources of this country. All I want to ask him is whether their party is only for Muslim men, or women as well,” Modi said.They can’t see the pain of Muslim women. Instead, they are disrupting Parliament and not letting the triple talaq bill pass,” he said. “Even Islamic countries do not have the practice of triple talaq,” Modi further said, while addressing an audience comprising BJP supporters from eastern UP.Modi’s jibe came amid signs pointing to creeping polarisation of the political discourse. Earlier this week, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor triggered a high-wattage confrontation by saying that the country will turn into a “Hindu Pakistan” if BJP wins the LS contest. BJP swiftly retaliated by saying that Tharoor was reading out the script handed to him by Congress’ boss Rahul Gandhi, and that the put-down directed at them was part of the Congress chief’s gameplan to polarise the electorate.Congress, after some contemplation, distanced itself from the remark but that failed to restrain the chief of the party’s Kerala unit, M M Hasan, from complimenting Tharoor for articulating the feelings of “all secular Congress members”.BJP also aggressively pounced on Rahul Gandhi reportedly outfitting Congress as a “Muslim party” before a delegation of Muslim intellectuals. “You can’t be a ‘janeu-dhari’ at one point and a ‘Muslim-dhari’ at another,” said defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while referring to the description Congress used for their chief during the Gujarat campaign.She also insisted that Congress would be responsible for any communal disturbance that might break out before the 2019 elections, inviting a riposte from former Union minister P Chidambaram on Saturday.As volleys are traded in the political arena, hearings in the Supreme Court over the Ayodhya matter have enhanced the prospect of hostilities on polarising themes continuing, at least in the immediate run.