Shatru responds: 'Haathi chale Bihar...... bhauken hazaar'

In his signature style, Bharatiya Janata Party leader and actor Shatrughan Sinha has given it back to his party colleague Kailash Vijayvargiya, who compared him with a 'dog running alongside a car' a day earlier.

Modifying a popular Hindi proverb, 'Haathi chale bazaar, kutte bhauken hazaar', which means that an elephant remains unfazed by dogs barking, Sinha tweeted on Tuesday, 'People want my reaction to Vijayvargiya's remark. My reaction to small or big flies in any party is Haathi chale Bihar,....bhaunken hazaar’.

The 'Bihari Babu', who was upset at being 'sidelined' by his party's top brass during the Bihar poll campaign and said that the result would have been different if he was projected as the chief ministerial candidate, met the two victorious leaders of the Grand Alliance -- Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav -- on Monday, sparking rumours of a possible disciplinary action from the party. The BJP, however, made it clear that there were no talks of any action against him.

But, senior party leader Vijayvargiya, infamous for his controversial statements, could not resist the temptation of making another one. "When a car moves, a dog runs along with it too. The dog believes that the car is moving because of it. This party is not dependent on one person, there's a whole organisation and hierarchy here," Vijayvargiya, a former minister in Madhya Pradesh, had said.

However, Sinha omitted the word 'dog' while quoting the Hindi proverb in reply to Vijayvargiya's jibe.

He also rejected rumours of him quitting the BJP saying, ‘the BJP shall be my first and probably last party. I joined this party when it had two MPs and today it commands a majority.’

Earlier, Vijayvargiya had dubbed Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan as ‘anti-nationalist’ for his ‘extreme intolerance’ comment. ‘Shah Rukh lives in India, but his soul is in Pakistan. His films make crores here but he thinks India to be intolerant,’ Vijayvargiya said in a series of tweets amid mounting concerns over the ‘climate of intolerance’.

He later withdrew his tweets after coming under fire.