New Delhi: In yet another veiled attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor mocked him by calling a “hero on a white stallion with an upraised sword in his hand”.

Tharoor had waded into a controversy at the Bangalore Literature Festival on Sunday last by claiming that an unnamed RSS leader had compared Modi to “a scorpion sitting on a Shivling”. A criminal defamation complaint had been filed against him in a Delhi court earlier in the day for his “scorpion” remark.

Tharoor again took a swipe at the prime minister, calling him “a hero on a white stallion with an upraised sword in his hand saying I know all the answers”.

“Modi is a one-man government and everybody dancing to what he says,” he said at an event organised by an industry body, adding India now has the “most centralised PMO” in history.

“Every decision is taken by the PMO (prime minister’s office). Every file has to be sent to the PMO for approval,” he claimed. On the next parliamentary election, Tharoor said that there will be both pre-poll and post-poll alliances between the Congress and other opposition parties, but Congress president Rahul Gandhi “may not be” the prime ministerial face.

The coming Lok Sabha election is important in that it will deny the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a second term in power, the Congress MP said.

He said the decision on the prime ministerial face of the Congress alliance would be a collective one and “it may not be him (Gandhi). The Congress has a broader notion of a leader unlike the BJP. We had people like Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and others having tremendous track record”.