Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday compared the Congress to "rusted iron" and said the party was now being run by "urban Naxals", the tirade coming during a speech to BJP workers in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

Modi asked his party workers not to give the "dynastic and corrupt" Congress the "slightest opportunity" to return to power, saying it would push the state back into the “Bimaru” category.

“Bimaru” is an acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, coined in the 1980s to underline their poor performance on the economy, healthcare and education. It's a play on the Hindi word “bimari” for illness.

"The Congress is a dynastic party with a history of corruption running into crores of rupees. It's like rusted iron that will be finished if kept in the rain," Modi said, addressing the cadre on the birth anniversary of Deendayal Upadhyaya, co-founder of the BJP’s previous avatar, the Jana Sangh.

Modi said the Congress had outsourced everything, from its ideology to its slogans, to "urban Naxals".

“Whatever India does, no matter how big the achievement, the Congress doesn't like it at all," he said.

Modi went on to claim credit for the passage of the women's bill, which reserves 33 per cent seats in Parliament and the Assembles for women, while accusing the Opposition bloc INDIA of supporting the bill reluctantly, unable to ignore the “power of women”.

However, the Congress-led UPA had in 2010 got a women’s reservation bill passed in the Rajya Sabha, after which it lapsed.

Without directly referring to the Congress’s demand for an OBC sub-quota within the reservation for women, Modi warned his audience that the Congress and its allies would try to divide “Nari Shakti” (women power).

He urged the women in the crowd to remain united and asked: “Will you allow Nari Shakti to be divided?”

Modi claimed that given an opportunity, the Congress would back out of the bill. He alleged that after supporting the bill, the party was now picking holes in it.

The Congress’s grouse with the current version of the bill is that it seems to postpone the implementation of the reservation for years by tying it to a census and delimitation.

BJP veteran Uma Bharti, once the party’s OBC face, has supported the demand for an OBC sub-quota within the women’s quota.

“Prime Minister is welcomed in the land of Bhopal. He is the messiah of the poor and backward, I am sure he will give a positive signal on OBC reservation for women,” the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister posted on X on Monday.

Uma, frustrated at being sidelined in the party, has been venting her anger at the BJP in the run-up to the polls.

The BJP has been in power in Madhya Pradesh for four consecutive terms, and appears to be battling anger as well as fatigue among the voters. Further, factionalism in the state BJP has given rise to multiple chief ministerial aspirants.

Apparently trying to counter the anti-incumbency, the Prime Minister said that since the BJP had been ruling the state for 20 years, the youths who would vote for the first time would not have seen the Congress in power.

“They are fortunate that they haven’t seen the bad governance of the Congress,” he said, urging young voters to ask their parents and grandparents how pathetic the situation was under the Congress.

He asked BJP workers to travel door to door and tell or remind voters about the Congress’s misrule in the state.

As in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which too go to the polls this year, the battle in Madhya Pradesh is bipolar.