“Ram is the creation of poets who glorified him in their ballads,”he said.

“But Ram Sethu is a natural formation under the sea,” Bhatacharjee told in a meeting to mark the 15th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid.

Attacking the BJP and Sangh Parivar, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the saffron brigade had been opposing the Sethusamudram project just to gain some religious mileage without understanding its vital role in economic development of the region.

Unethical
According to him, development projects ought to get priority and it is not only unethical, but also a highly disturbing trend to see that the Saffron is out to block the project by raising the bogey of Ram and misleading the people.

The state unit of the BJP which did not take Buddhadev remarks kindly, lambasted him for trying to appease the minorities.

State BJP general secretary Rahul Sinha said that the remarks were an attempt to appease the Muslim votebank after the carnage on the minorities in Nandigram.

Matter of faith
“Ram is a matter of faith and communists had always hated godmen. Even they spread canards against Subhas Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda,” Sinha said.

Bhattacharjee’s remarks came months after Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's similar claims on the existence of Lord Ram which had generated a country-wide controversy.