BJP President Amit Shah said on Sunday that more cases of mob lynching took place between 2011 and 2013 when the Congress-led UPA was in power than the three-year rule of the NDA at the Centre.

Within hours, the Congress said Shah's claims were false, and listed cases of mob lynching in the past 3 years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office. The Congress claimed the number during 2011-2013 was "much less."

"I do not want to compare and undermine the current incidents of lynching. I am also serious about them. But there have been more lynching incidents in 2011, 2012 and 2013," Shah told a gathering of professionals in Goa.

Shah's remarks come after PM Modi on Thursday broke his silence over a wave of attacks on people accused of eating beef or slaughtering cows, saying killing in the name of "gau bhakti" was not acceptable.

To a question on "growing apprehensions" across the country over the government's apparent lack of effective action against the perpetrators, Shah said, "Do you know of any such incident where arrests have not been made? I do not have any answer to apprehensions... There is no apprehension anywhere in the country."

Indicating that incidents of lynching, being law and order issues, are a state subject, Shah, who is on a two-day visit to Goa, said that since the NDA came to power, questions are being raised differently.

He said Mohammad Akhlaq was killed in UP when an SP government was in power and was responsible, but protests took place in Delhi against the Modi government. "Kya fashion hai," he said.

When a local remarked that "yeh beef ban Goa mein nahin chalega (this beef ban won't work in Goa)", Shah smiled and said, "Good you brought this up…. Media ko isme ras hai. The ban was imposed in 1976 by a previous government. The BJP never imposed beef ban in Goa. But no one put this question on beef ban to the Congress."

Meanwhile, Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala said the government was rattled after President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday showed the mirror of truth, expressing concern at the growing incidents of "mob frenzy".

Releasing a list of 52 such incidents, claiming they took place over the past three years, he said that most accused were from the BJP and its affiliated organisations. "Yesterday, Nityanand Mahto, the media in-charge of BJP's Ramgarh unit in Jharkhand, was arrested over last week's mob lynching of a man. He instigated a mob; a video of the incident shows that he dragged the victim out of the van," he said.

In May, a similar incident took place in which Gautam Verma, his brother Vikas Verma, and their friend Gangesh Gupta were killed by a mob in the state, the Congress leader said.

Even their 80-year-old grandmother was not spared and badly beaten by the mob, while the police looked on as mute spectators, he said.

Statistics available from open sources suggest that 2 cases of mob lynching took place in 2014, 9 in 2015 and 20 in 2016. There have been 20 cases in 2017. The same sources suggest that 7 cases took place in 2011, 8 in 2012 and 14 in 2013.