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Updated: Mar 21, 2019 00:28 IST

The torrid Indian summer seemed to have come early in the holy city of Varanasi as Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers scuffled briefly during Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s visit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency.

Priyanka Gandhi launched a sharp attack on Modi, calling him an Indian dictator (“Hindustani tanashah”) and compared the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) rule to the British Raj during which people were tortured and no one allowed to raise their voice. She also garlanded a statue of India’s second prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of the Congress party, who, along with Sardar Patel (India’s first home minister, also of the Congress) and Subhas Chandra Bose (a Congressman till he was ousted from the party in 1939), has been adopted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims that none of them got the credit due to them from the Congress because they did not belong to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Priyanka Gandhi’s gesture made Ramachandra Guha, one of India’s best-known historians, to wonder aloud on Twitter whether this was the first time a member of the family was acknowledging Shastri. Soon after Gandhi garlanded the statue and left, a group of BJP workers said the statue had been desecrated and consecrated it using Ganga water.

Priyanka Gandhi, who addressed a Congress workers’ convention in Varanasi, also took a boat ride from Balua Ghat Ramnagar to Dashashwamedh Ghat, spoke to boatmen at Assi ghat , and participated in a road show from Dashashwamedh Ghat to the gate of Kashi Vishwanath temple. She also offered prayers to Baba Kashi Vishwanath at Kashi Vishwanath temple, where she spent few minutes in sanctum sanctorum. Ahead of her visit, a group of lawyers wrote the District Magistrate protesting her entry into the temple saying she was married to a Christian.

At the convention, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the Congress’s east UP incharge, welcomed Amrita Pandey, a relative of UP BJP president Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, to the party.

Gandhi said: “I want a new politics which gives importance to public. We are going to practice a new politics, especially in UP, in which voice of people is heard, their problems are solved, and complaints are addressed. I don’t want to give big speeches; I want to reach people in every village to know about their problems and share their pain, and also find a solution to their problems.”

She added that the “role of the Congress workers is very important in making of this new politics. So unite and work together.”

Waving a copy of the poll manifesto of the BJP in 2014, Gandhi said the party made eight big promises for Varanasi, but fulfilled none. Cleaning the Ganga, beautification of the ghats, better condition of weavers and a world-class education system were among the promises made by the BJP.

Reacting to Gandhi’s remarks, Kashi BJP region spokesperson Navratan Rathi said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi works for 125 crore people of the country continuously. He pays attention to Sabka Saath Sabka vikas. He is chowkidar of 125 crore Indians.”