New Delhi (PTI): The Arjun Singh episode has provided fodder for the BJP to attack the Congress as it on Tuesday said the senior leaders of the ruling party were behaving like "pets".

Without taking the names of any particular Congress leader, BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said certain utterances from some leaders were a "disgrace" to democracy and to the democratic polity of the country.

"We feel that in a large country like India where the democracy has matured and when the world is looking upto us, senior leaders of the Congress party should stop behaving like pets," he said.

Asked repeatedly at a party media briefing as to whom he was referring to, Rudy shied away from giving a direct reply but said it was not desirable for respected leaders of the party to behave like pets.

"I am concerned about the standards of democracy in the country," he said when asked why he was asking the Congress leaders to stop behaving like "pets".

The BJP's dig came amid the "loyalist" row in the Congress and a day after Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh declared that he was a loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family but not a sycophant.

Singh found himself at the Centre of the controversy after he recently criticised the decision-making process in the Congress and suggested that evaluation of loyalty in the party was being done in a "very limited context".