The Opposition’s vice presidential candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Tuesday said he had written to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, requesting him to reconsider the death penalty awarded to former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav. He said he believed that capital punishment belonged to the medieval age, ANI reported.

His statements followed the Shiv Sena’s jibe against his opposition to the death penalty awarded to 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Menon. “I think the Congress party is insulting the country by nominating such a person to a constitutional post,” Hindustan Times quoted Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut as saying.

The vice-presidential candidate also emphasised that his views were not linked to any political party.

In 2016, Gandhi had raised concerns about capital punishment. “Should a petition for clemency be left to the clement heart or the inclement mind of one person, even if that person be the president of the republic?” Gandhi had written in his book, The Death Penalty: Why India Should Say No To Capital Punishment. “We are living in times of division,” the former diplomat said. “This spells danger for our future, not only for politics but for the nation.”

The former West Bengal governor has been a critic of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government’s handling of incidents related to intolerance. He said he would like to see a people’s faith in politics being revived.