DELHI/AHMEDABAD/PATNA: Congress president Rahul Gandhi said the violence in Gujarat was rooted in the “weakening economy” of the state and it was wrong to target the migrant workers for it, even as the party accused the ruling BJP for fanning the attacks against outsiders.

The attack by Congress came on a day when the chief ministers of UP Yogi Adityanath, his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who hails from Bihar, spoke to Gujarat CM chief minister Vijay Rupani to voice their concern.

A leader of JD(U), which is headed by Nitish, dashed off an open letter to Rahul, blaming his party for the violence against Biharis.“You appointed your Gujarat MLA Alpesh Thakor as one of the national secretaries in-charge of Bihar and his outfit Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena is driving out migrant Biharis,” Neeraj Kumar, JD(U) MLC and spokesman, alleged. But senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel gave a clean chit to Thakor, alleging that the BJP government was trying to politicise the issue.

On his part, Rahul tweeted, “Poverty is the biggest terror. At the root of the violence in Gujarat are the locked factories in the state and unemployment. Order and economy both are crumbling. It is wrong to target the migrant workers for it. I will firmly stand against this.” Targeting BJP, AICC spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Narendra Modi goes to UP to fight elections and seeks votes in Bihar and then “victimises people of both the states”.