Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar's values are the basis for nation-building.
His remarks came a day after the BJP raised the demand for the Bharat Ratna honour for Savarkar, one of the tallest Hindutva icons in the pantheon of Sangh Parivar, in its manifesto for the October 21 Maharashtra polls.
Addressing an election rally in the state's Akola district, Modi rued that Savarkar was denied the Bharat Ratna.
"It is due to Savarkar's sanskar (values) that we put nationalism as the basis for nation-building," Modi said.
Terming the opposition parties as "shameless", he slammed them for objecting to the issue of abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir being raised during campaigning by BJP leaders for the Maharashtra Assembly polls.
"How dare they question (abrogation of) Article 370 and ask how is it connected to Maharashtra polls?" he said.
He dubbed the Congress-NCP alliance as a "bhrashtwadi yuti" (corrupt coalition), which took Maharashtra backwards by a decade.
