Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi addressing party workers in Kerala
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi today accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of skipping details and focusing on what he called "event-based politics".
"The PM, what little now that I have seen of him, doesn't like to go into details too much. He likes to do his politics in the form of events. So he likes to come up with an idea and have a big media celebration around that," Mr Gandhi alleged, telling party workers in Kerala that he saw a gap for the Congress to fill.
He said PM Modi's development campaign was "superficial," and alleged a parallel "underground campaign which is the poisonous campaign," accusing the BJP and its ideological mentor the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS of "dividing people" and "neglecting the poor".
"Wherever we are facing this, the Congress is standing up to the challenge, organising itself and defeating the BJP," the party's vice-president claimed, offering as an example the humongous defeat handed to the BJP in Bihar by the Grand Alliance, in which the Congress played junior partner to Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United and Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal.
It was the Congress, he said, that offered people real development while the BJP "just makes slogans of Make in India, connect in India." PM Modi, he alleged, was being forced to acknowledge the advantages of schemes launched by the previous Congress government like MNREGA, which he had once dismissed as a "hopeless programme".
Reacting strongly to Rahul Gandhi's attack on PM, BJP spokesperson, Sambit Patra said, "Why doesn't the Congress vice president focus on corruption in his party in Kerala where the government is sun-burnt in solar scam."
"Under the Congress regime, MNREGA was a way to siphon money, we introduced Direct Benefit Transfer," Mr Patra said, adding "The Congress hasn't recovered from the shock of 2014 (Lok Sabha elections).
As the battle hots up for assembly elections in five states, the BJP and PM Modi have rubbished Rahul Gandhi's frequent attacks, insisting the Congress leader is still smarting from the debilitating defeat his party suffered at the hands of the BJP in the 2014 national election.
Kerala - where Rahul Gandhi is spending two days attempting to knit together a party unit torn apart by internal battles and corruption charges dogging the government it runs - is one of the states where elections will be held by April this year.
While the Congress' chief rival in the state is the Left, the BJP is attempting to upgrade its status from minor player.
Despite the slim majority of 72 legislators that Congress led UDF enjoys in the Assembly, CPM swept the local body elections last year. BJP made inroads in select districts like Thiruvananthapuram - where it pushed the Congress to a third position.