Congress politician B.K. Hariprasad on Thursday attributed BJP president Amit Shah’s bout of swine flu to his party’s alleged efforts to topple the Congress-Janata Dal Secular government in Karnataka, triggering a verbal battle.

“It’s called swine flu. In Hindi, it’s suar ka zukam (flu of the swine). The people’s curse will befall him if he touches Karnataka again. That will lead to still worse diseases,” the Rajya Sabha member told a Hindi channel.

Earlier, at a protest against the BJP’s alleged attempts to poach on Congress MLAs, he had said: “Amit Shah was shaken after our MLAs started coming back and now he has fever…. (But) it is not a normal fever, it’s swine flu.”

He had added: “You need to know that if you try to dislodge the Karnataka government, (you will get) not just swine flu, but vomiting and dysentery too.”

The state BJP claimed Hariprasad’s “mocking at health condition of Sri @AmitShahji shows his mental stability”. “This rogue needs to learn human values & is unfit to live in a civilised society. We request @RahulGandhi to admit him to NIMHANS to get some treatment,” it tweeted, referring to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore.

Shah is being treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.