Surat, June 15 (IANS) Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Sunday dared the Congress party to get him booked for sedition for his controversial remarks last week questioning the tax revenue sharing between the state and the central governments. “I invite the whole Congress regime, please do not waste a single day, book me for sedition right today and hang me. Let me see how they can,” he told a public function in this south Gujarat city.

“How can they? They have not been able to hang Afzal Guru,” he added, referring to the man convicted for the terror attack on the parliament building in 2001.

Modi was responding to the Congress reaction to his earlier statements.

Addressing a function in Vadodara last Sunday, Modi had said Gujarat gives Rs.400 billion as taxes to the central government and receives only 2.5 percent of it in return. He rhetorically challenged the central government to stop collecting taxes from the state and also stop aid to it.

The Congress Wednesday said Modi’s remarks were nothing less than an “assault on the idea of India”.

“In the history of independent India never has any chief minister of a state said that it should not give taxes to the centre. Instead of registering anti-national cases against journalists, anti-national cases should be filed against the chief minister of Gujarat,” a Congress spokesman had said.