A victory for Narendra Modi will be a defeat for the people, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said on Sunday.

“The Prime Minister doesn’t meet common people to ask them about their problems. He prefers meeting the Presidents of countries and big industrialists,” the Congress general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh said in Bahraich.

She was campaigning for Savitri Bai Phoole, the Bahraich MP who recently left the BJP for the Congress.

“The Prime Minister and other BJP leaders don’t meet you because they are not interested in your well-being. They are harassing Dalits and Muslims. They are working against democracy and the people. Their victory will be a defeat for the people,” Priyanka said.

“Try to understand how they are weakening the people and democracy to try and strengthen themselves. I have met Dalit youths who were beaten up when they demanded their rights.”

Earlier in Amethi, Priyanka had dismissed allegations by Modi and his party that the Opposition was bereft of issues and was therefore questioning the Prime Minister’s claims about his backward-class origins. She told reporters she had never spoken about any politician’s caste. “Even today I don’t know the caste of the Prime Minister,” Priyanka said.

“As far as my knowledge is concerned, the Opposition, particularly Congress leaders, are raising only the issue of development this election. They are talking about the lack of development and employment and the deplorable (state of) women’s security. I have never made such comments (about Modi’s caste).”

She sat on the ground with a group of women in a village and requested them to think about what nationalism really means.

“Meeting the people, asking them about their problems and trying to sort them out is true nationalism,” she said.

“But the BJP is propagating a kind of nationalism in which the common citizen has no place; only those who chant slogans in Modi’s name are called nationalists. A victory for Modi would be a defeat for the people.”