Rahul Gandhi on Monday promised a comprehensive financial package for the poor if the Congress was voted to power in Gujarat, and accused the BJP governments in the state and at the Centre of working for a handful of industrialists.

The Congress has offered a hatful of freebies including farm loan waivers ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections, due in December, at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mocked the giveaways offered by political parties as a “rewri culture” injurious to the economy.

Rahul, however, sought to turn the tables on Modi by accusing him of giving land worth hundreds of crores of rupees to a few select industrialists and writing off loans to help the super-rich.“If Sardar Patel were alive today, he would have asked you to throw out a government that writes off the loans of industrialists instead of helping the poor farmers,” he said at a Congress booth workers’ conference in Ahmedabad.

Rahul went on to use the symbolism of Patel, who was from Gujarat, to accuse the BJP of hypocrisy.

“The BJP built the tallest statue of Sardar Patel but went on to demolish his value system. Sardar was the voice of the farmers of Gujarat and the rest of India. The BJP works against the farmers’ interests. Sardar made democratic institutions and the BJP crushed them,” he said. Praising Gujarat’s spirit of entrepreneurship, Rahul said the Congress would stand by the state’s small and medium businesses.“These big industrialists don’t give jobs.

The small and medium businesses in Gujarat created jobs. Modi broke their backbone through the note-bandi and the flawed GST. Three four industrialists get everything now while others have been destroyed. The Congress will support these small enterprises,” he said.

Attacking Modi’s vaunted “Gujarat model”, Rahul said: “Today, Gujarat is the only place where you have to seek permission to hold an agitation against the government. Did Sardar seek permission from the British to join the freedom movement? Permission is needed to raise the people’s concerns!“Congress workers should understand that this is not merely a political fight between two parties. I know what you have suffered over the past many years. All the institutions here have been captured by the BJP – police, the judiciary, Election Commission, media. But if you fight bravely, the BJP can be uprooted.”Rahul continued: “Gujarat has become the center of drugs. Drugs worth thousands of crores are regularly seized at Mundra port. If a poor man is caught with a few grams of drugs, the police dump him in jail. Why are the police taking no action against the Mundra port owners?“Why no action, even as consignments (of drugs) are seized every two-three months? What is the reason? There has to be some reason. This is the Gujarat model — the rule of three-four industrialists.”The Mundra port is operated by Adani, who Rahul alleges is one of Modi’s favoured capitalists.

The Congress has promised farm loan waivers of up to Rs 3 lakh per farmer, Rs 4 lakh to every family that suffered bereavement from Covid, and at least 10 lakh jobs for the youth.Among its other promises are free electricity up to 300 units for every poor family, cooking gas cylinders at Rs 500 each, 3,000 government English-medium schools, free education for girls, and a Rs 5 subsidy per litre for milk producers.Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party too has made a big foray into Gujarat with a downpour of freebies, and the Congress fears the AAP will cut into its votes.