Bofors petitioner and former BJP leader campaigns against PM Modi in Varanasi

VARANASI: Former BJP leader

Ajay Agarwal

, who contested against Sonia Gandhi from

Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat

in 2014 polls on BJP ticket on Tuesday condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks against Rajiv Gandhi.

Agarwal, a senior lawyer, said that no charge was ever proven in any court of the country against former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case and he was given a "clean chit".

He claimed that he was representing the Bofors case as a petitioner in person in the Supreme Court against Hinduja brothers for the last 14 years and knows the minutest details of the case.

Agarwal, who held a press conference along with Congress candidate Ajay Rai in Varanasi said he was camping in the temple town to campaign against Modi.

He condemned Modi's challenge to the Congress to contest the remaining two rounds of the ongoing general elections in the name of Rajiv Gandhi and went on to accuse the prime minister of provoking Pakistan to start a war to reap electoral benefits.

Agarwal also presented an alleged audio clipping of former Congress leader

Satya Pal Malik

— now a BJP leader and Governor of Jammu and Kashmir— in which Malik is purportedly heard saying that Rajiv Gandhi was not a corrupt or a greedy person.

Agarwal allegedly talked to Malik when he was the Governor of Bihar in 2017.

Malik joined the Congress in 1984 and became its Rajya Sabha MP but resigned three years later in the backdrop of the Bofors scam.

Slamming the BJP candidate from Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, Agarwal said: "I had received over 1.73 lakh votes in 2014 poll... I had improved BJP's performance in the bastion of Gandhi family."