Anupam Kher has come out in support of his "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" co-star Shah Rukh Khan after Yogi Adityanath compared the Bollywood superstar with Pakistani terrorist Hafiz Saeed for his comments over intolerance in India.

Kher, 60, took to Twitter to blast the controversial statements made by some of the BJP leaders against Shah Rukh. "Some members of the BJP really need to control their tongue & stop talking rubbish about @iamsrk. He is a national icon & We r PROUD of him," he tweeted.

Hitting out at Shah Rukh two days after the actor added his voice to the protest by the intelligentsia against the 'climate of intolerance', Adityanath also suggested that the actor should go to Pakistan. In another controversial remark, the Gorakhpur MP said Shah Rukh should remember that if a "huge mass" of people in the country would boycott his films then he would also have to wander on streets like a "normal Muslim".

The controversy started with senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya's series of tweets yesterday where he painted Shah Rukh as an "anti-nationalist" and said that the actor's "soul" is in Pakistan though he lives in India. Hindutva leader Sadhvi Prachi yesterday termed the 50-year-old actor a "Pakistani agent".