New Delhi, Oct 4 (IANS): The BJP and its affiliates are fuelling communal passions as the "Gujarat model" of development has increasingly come under attack, the CPI-M has said.

"Given this, the BJP has, obviously, returned to its basics - communal polarisation as the mainstay of its campaign for the 2014 general election," CPI-M mouthpiece "People's Democracy" said in an editorial.

Not surprisingly, it said, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh had denounced Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde's appeal to chief ministers not to arrest or jail innocent Muslims on terror charges.

The CPI-M said Shinde's letter was in response to demands made by secular forces in the country to undo the wrong of detaining innocent Muslim youth in connection with terror cases.

It said the BJP's campaign of projecting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the basis of the "so-called vibrant Gujarat" had been punctured with facts.

It added that Gujarat was now seen to be well below the national average on all human development indicators.

"It is, therefore, not surprising that the communal tensions continuing in western Uttar Pradesh after the Muzaffarnagar riots appear to be spreading menacingly in other parts of the country," the CPI-M journal said.

"Such sharpening of communal tensions to serve the needs of the BJP's electoral support cannot be allowed," it added.