New Delhi: BJP chief JP Nadda on Monday wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, questioning the “stoic silence” of his party on the recent hooch tragedy which left several people dead in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu hooch tragedy was entirely a “man-made disaster”, Nadda said in his letter to Kharge, adding “perhaps if the deep nexus between the ruling DMK-INDI alliance dispensation and illicit liquor mafia did not exist today, 56 lives could have been saved”.

Nadda said the ghastly images of burning funeral pyres from Karunapuram village in Kallakurichi in the aftermath of Tamil Nadu’s “worst ever’ spurious liquor consumption tragedy, that has left 56 dead until now and almost 159 persons hospitalised, has shaken the conscience of the entire nation”.