A political row has broken out in India after former Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi's new look was compared to that of late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician and Assam state chief Himanta Biswa Sarma made the controversial comparison while canvassing for party candidates in Gujarat state.
Mocking Gandhi's bearded look that the former Congress president has been sporting of late, the Assam state chief said on Tuesday, "I just saw that his looks have also changed. I said in a TV interview a few days back that there is nothing wrong with his new look. But if you have to change the looks, at least make it like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or even Jawaharlal Nehru will do. It is better if it looks like Gandhiji. But why is your face turning into Saddam Hussein?"
His statement, however, didn't sit well with Congress members who hit back at the ruling BJP.
Slamming Sarma's choice of words, parliamentarian Manish Tewari dubbed the Assam state chief a "petty troll" before urging him to maintain decency in public.
"I would not even like to dignify this diatribe with my reaction. I think it is very important that we maintain the decorum of language in public and maintain some propriety. The CM of Assam, unfortunately, sounds like a petty troll when he articulates sentences of this type," Tewari said at a press conference in Ahmedabad on Wednesday.
However, this isn't the first time that the BJP and Congress have engaged in a war of words over controversial remarks made by one of their politicians concerning physical appearance.
In mid-November, Congress parliamentarian Madhusudan Mistry made derogatory comments against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declaring that he would show him his "aukaat (stature)" once his party triumphed in Gujarat.
The polls to elect a new state assembly in Gujarat, which is also PM Modi's home state, are scheduled to take place on December 1 and 5. The results will be declared on December 8.
In the last elections held in 2017, the BJP returned to power in the state for the sixth time by bagging 99 seats. Congress, on the other hand, was victorious in 77 constituencies in the 182-member legislature.