Bhopal: A day after senior BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia reminded his ‘arch rivals’, Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh, of his return to centre stage of politics in Madhya Pradesh with a tiger analogy, the latter on Friday paid him back in the same coin by taking help of similar metaphors.

Scindia, who pulled down the 15-month-old Kamal Nath government by switching over to BJP from Congress three months ago to ‘avenge’ his marginalization in the grand old party, on Thursday thundered the popular Bollywood line ‘tiger abhi zinda hai’, taken from Salman Khan starrer ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, to send a reminder to the two Congress veterans that he has staged a strong comeback in state politics by getting lion’s share in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan ministry.

Former chief minister Singh, however, retorted back by recounting his past favourite sport of hunting tigers when the wildlife Act had not come into force.

“Late Madhavrao Scindia (Scindia’s father) and I used to hunt tigers when there was no ban on hunting. After Indira Gandhi brought in the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, I started capturing tigers in my camera”, Singh tweeted.

In another tweet, he observed that a tiger was a territorial animal and presence of more than one tiger in a forest leads to territorial fights causing death of one of them.

He was apparently reminding Scindia of the latter’s prospective adversary in ruling BJP, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who had presented a similar tiger analogy after he lost power in the 2018 Assembly elections in MP.

Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath also took potshots at Scindia for his remarks by portraying him as a ‘circus tiger’.

“Tigers are found in two contrasting environments, in jungles and in circuses. Circus tigers lack the basic instinct of aggression as displayed by their jungle peers. Similarly, there are two kinds of horses, one used as a showpiece to bridge grooms and the other used in races," Nath remarked sarcastically.

In another development, Scindia on Friday said he was surrounded by ‘cheels’ (eagles, falcons) who were out to attack him.

He, however, added that the prey birds chose to attack him because they found something in him.

Meanwhile, fissures in BJP came to fore on Friday with supporters of some senior party leaders staging demonstrations at various places for not giving their leaders berths in state ministry in Thursday's expansion.