The Congress on Sunday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his comment that "no constructive efforts" were made for decades to reintroduce cheetahs to India after the big cats were declared extinct in the country," reports ndtv.com.

Sharing a letter on Twitter, Congress leader and communications head Jairam Ramesh termed Modi as "a pathological liar".

"This was the letter that launched Project Cheetah in 2009. Our PM is a pathological liar. I couldn't lay my hands on this letter yesterday because of my preoccupation with the #BharatJodoYatra," he tweeted.

The letter dating back to 2009 states that Ramesh who was the Union Environment and Forests in the UPA-II government, asked an official of the Wildlife Trust of India to form a plan for return of cheetahs.

The big cats were declared extinct in the 1940s, due to hunting and loss of habit.

Incidentally, in 2012, the UPA government's plan to reintroduce the cheethas was resisted by the Supreme Court after some conservationists complained "importing the African cheetah for reintroduction in India was against the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) reintroduction guidelines."

However, in 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority requested the court, arguing that "IUCN had accepted reintroduction of a species as a legitimate process."

Following that the court gave a green signal to the plan with an order for a meticulous study.