Rahul Gandhi on Sunday asked which engine had gobbled up a bigger bite of the 40 per cent commission collected from Karnataka, confronting the BJP’s obsession with the "double-engine" rhetoric that seeks to hard sell the perceived advantages of the same party running the Centre and a state government.

Addressing a meeting in Anekal in Karnataka, Rahul said: “A government that was formed by stealing the people’s mandate is bound to continue stealing. What did the double-engine do? Stole your money. Why does Prime Minister Narendra Modi want the double-engine sarkar? For stealing? First, he should reveal which engine got what share of the 40 per cent commission.”

The state contractor’s association had written to the Prime Minister about some of the state ministers forcing them to pay 40 per cent kickbacks for clearing bills.

Insisting that the Prime Minister never acted against corruption, the former Congress president said: “If one engine was stealing money, what did the other engine do? Did Modi take action against corruption? I asked in Parliament, what is Modi’s relationship with Adani? He threw me out of Parliament. Now Modi is found alone in his road shows; he has thrown Yediyurappa and Bommai out.”

Rahul explained: “Our leaders are together during road shows. Modi is all alone. There could be only two reasons. Either Modi wants to see only himself as others are lesser mortals than him, or he wants to hide the leaders of Karnataka from the people who know about the 40 per cent commission. But that won’t work; people know the government had two engines and both engines looted Karnataka. Otherwise, the Delhi engine would have worked against the Karnataka engine."

He added: “They (the BJP) seem to like the number 40. So please give them only 40 seats and give at least 150 seats to the Congress. If you don’t give 150 (to the Congress), they will again try to steal your MLAs by purchasing them. But this time, the Congress party will get 150 seats."

Rahul was referencing how the BJP had destabilised the Janata Dal Secular-Congress government in 2019 when 17 of the alliance's lawmakers, 14 of them from the Congress, defected.

Rahul reeled out the five guarantees the Congress has promised before wrapping up his speech, refusing to deviate from the script amid the noise about the Bajarang Dal and the film The Kerala Story that the BJP ecosystem has whipped up. While the Congress has triggered the storm by promising a ban on the Bajrang Dal, it has refused to be sucked into the vortex of communal discourse.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was in Moodbirdi in Mangalore district before addressing a joint public rally with Rahul in Shivaji Nagar, said BJP leaders were trying to whip up passions on irrelevant issues because they can’t speak on unemployment, high prices other critical concerns of the people.

“What will they say on the price of a gas cylinder which has jumped from Rs 410 to Rs 1,100 and diesel which costs Rs 90 a litre now? There are 2.5 lakh vacancies in the state and the youth is struggling with the scourge of unemployment. What will they say?” she said.

“I heard the Prime Minister talk about terrorism a couple of days ago.... The people here are grappling with the terror of 40 per cent commission, the terror of high prices of essential commodities and the terror of unemployment. You don’t talk about it. Every day five farmers are committing suicide in Karnataka. In the past four years, 6,487 farmers have committed suicide.”

Other Congress leaders too steadfastly kept the focus on these issues without locking horns with the BJP on the religion-based discourse. The content and language of Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel’s comments at a media conference in Bangalore on Sunday contrasted sharply with the incendiary speeches delivered by BJP chief ministers Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma, who remain fixated on the Hindu-Muslim divide.

Baghel touched upon only three issues — the delivery of promises in Congress-ruled states, the BJP’s hypocrisy on corruption, and the alleged threat to assassinate Mallikarjun Kharge. He said the Congress governments in Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan had delivered on their election promises while Modi’s pledges about black money and two crore jobs every year had been forgotten.

He said Modi had promised a corruption-free government but gave his friends total freedom to loot, with the BJP administration in Karnataka becoming infamous as a “40 per cent” government.