Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Congress-free Maharashtra” statement, stating such a thing was impossible as his party’s ethos and ideology were congruent with Maharashtra and its great leaders.

“How does the BJP propose to banish the Congress from the minds of Maharashtra’s populace? Do they not know there is no difference between the Congress’s ideology and the thoughts of Shivaji Maharaj, Babasaheb Ambedkar and Jyotiba Phule?” he said, addressing election rallies in in Dindori in Nashik and Saswad in Pune.

Referring to the Prime Minister’s charge that the Congress had done nothing in the last 60 years, Mr. Gandhi said it was an insult to the sweat of farmers and labourers who toiled hard to build the country and Maharashtra.

“The Congress has built dams in Nashik. Today, Pune’s auto industry is the envy of America,” he said.

Charging that the Centre was working for the rich at the expense of the poor, Mr. Gandhi warned that soon the country would be run by industrialists at whose behest Mr. Modi was allegedly functioning.

He accused the Prime Minister of being in cahoots with a lobby of industrialists which led to his lifting of controls on drug prices at the behest of some U.S. companies. As a result, prices of medicines for treatment of diabetes, blood pressure and cancer had risen sharply.

“Behind closed doors, Mr. Modi has ensured that all your hard-earned money enters the plush wallets of certain industrialists. The Congress government had worked to make medicines free for the poor. But today, drugs for treatment of cancer have shot up from Rs. 8,000 to Rs. 1 lakh,” he commented, stating that the ulterior motive behind his U.S. visit was to please American companies.

Taking potshots at the Centre’s style of functioning, Mr. Gandhi said the Modi government was cleverly continuing schemes like the Direct Benefit Transfer which had been originally inaugurated by the Congress.

“But this time, the money is being transferred from the wallets of the poor to the pockets of rich industrialists,” he said, urging people to reinstate a pro-poor Congress government in Maharashtra.