NEW DELHI: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has launched a scathing attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress government that it controls, positioning himself as a natural prime ministerial candidate and decimating the hopes of his rivals within BJP.Even as the chorus of support for naming Modi as the PM candidate grew louder at BJP’s national council meet in Delhi, the reception to his speech on Sunday suggested that the pending formality of announcement notwithstanding the main opposition had come to accept him as the leader of its electoral campaign ahead of the next general election.Calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a “night watchman” and accusing the Nehru-Gandhi family of maintaining its control over Congress at the expense of the party and the nation, Modi said the family did not let the more deserving senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee become the prime minister. “If Pranab Mukherjee had become prime minister, so much ruin would not have happened. But then, if Pranab da had turned out to be successful, what would have happened to the family?” Modi asked, without naming anybody from the dynasty. “When the time came to form the government, they chose a PM who could do what the family wanted; they chose another night watchman.As a buffer, they appointed an economist to the post,” Modi said, dubbing the former Congress president Sitaram Kesri too as a night watchman. “The nation never thought the night would be so long and dark,” he said, referring to the Congress-led coalition government’s rule since 2004.I&B Manish Tewari reacted from the Congress side on Twitter, reminding that the BJP leader and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had reacted sharply to Modi’s alleged complicity in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. “AMNESIA Is it not true that Vajpayee ji reminded a certain CM about Raj Dharma in 02? What did Vajpayee attribute their 2004 defeat to?” Tewari tweeted. Following the defeat of the BJP-led government in 2004, Vajpayee had blamed the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat as one of the reasons for the defeat.Accusing the ruling party of graft in the helicopter deal and 2G, among other deals, he said Congress should be renamed the “commission party” as it ensured a cut for everybody in the family, reeling out a list of relations, adding “son-in-law”, referring to Congress president’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, after a pause, saying that he forgot a few relations since he was a bachelor.Modi took care to reel out achievements of other BJP chief ministers, saying, “I want to tell the political pundits that the nation has seen rule by the Left, by Congress, by coalitions and they have seen the work of BJP. Evaluate their tenure and in good governance we will come out shining.”He said there had been only one prime minister who was not of “Congress gotra” — Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “Till Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, VP Singh, IK Gujral were in Congress they had no chance of being PM. Their strength came outside Congress,” Modi said.Talking about corruption under the Congress regime, he said, “BJP is with a mission and Congress is for commission.” Modi spoke about the Gujarat model of development, citing the example of the state utilities, which, he said, were the only profitable entities of their kind in the country because the state government managed to stop power leakages.“These days, there is talk of economic reforms. I ask the government — are the steps you are taking reforms? You call clearing your mistakes reforms?” Modi also took a dig at the members of the National Advisory Council, saying the “jhola carrying five-star activists” were disconnected from ground realities.“Such people are trying to make decisions for the country,” he said.