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An Indian federal minister, Narayan Rane, has been arrested over his controversial remark about slapping Maharashtra state’s chief minister.

Mr Rane reportedly said that Uddhav Thackeray forgot the year of India’s independence and had to ask an aide during his speech on 15 August.

“Had I been there, I would have given him a slap,” he told a rally on Monday.

Mr Rane and his party colleagues say the case against him is borne out of political malice.

The minister is likely to be produced in a local court shortly where he will seek bail.

“It is shameful that the chief minister does not know the year of independence. He leaned back to ask about the count of years of independence during his speech,” he is reported to have said.

His arrest follows clashes between the members of Mr Rane’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Mr Thackeray’s Shiv Sena party.

The Sena has defended the arrest saying his comment was aimed at provoking tensions in the state, but Mr Rane’s party said his arrest was against India’s “constitutional values”.

Mr Rane, Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Mr Modi’s cabinet, used to be a member of the Shiv Sena until 2005 when he switched to the Congress party and a few years later to BJP.

The BJP and Sena were also alliance partners until 2019. The two parties – who support Hindu nationalism – have been at loggerheads since their decades-old partnership came to a bitter end.

Mr Thackeray broke his pre-poll alliance with the BJP after it refused to make him the chief minister. He then formed an alliance with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.