Patna: The BJP on Wednesday accused Congress president Rahul Gandhi of dividing intellectuals on religious lines.

The party was reacting in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's meeting with a select group of Muslim intellectuals on Wednesday evening in Delhi.

"We demand that Congress should stop dividing the country and the intellectuals in the name of religion," BJP national spokesperson Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, who was in Patna on Wednesday, told The Telegraph.

The BJP spokesperson accused the Congress president of pursuing the politics of vote bank and claimed that the Congress had always used the Muslims as a vote bank.

"When Lok Sabha elections are approaching, Congress is getting cosy with Muslims. Ahead of assembly elections in Gujarat and Karnataka, Rahul was visiting temples," Shahnawaz said.

He sought to know from the Congress leader what his stand on issues like triple talaq and setting up of Shariat courts was.

Speaking about BJP president Amit Shah's visit to Bihar for first time after NDA government was formed in the state in July last year, Shahnawaz claimed that people of the state were eagerly waiting for the visit.

The BJP national president would be given a grand welcome in Patna on Thursday, he promised.

Shahnawaz also claimed that with the coming back of Nitish Kumar in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fold, the alliance had been strengthened and it would deliver better results in 2019 than what the NDA had achieved in the 2014 general election.

"The NDA won 31 seats in (Bihar in) 2014," he pointed out. "With Nitish Kumar back in the NDA we are now working on Mission 40 which entails winning all the 40 Lok Sabha seats of Bihar," the BJP spokesperson added.