Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a blistering attack on the Congress on Saturday at a rally in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh while campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Just days before the state goes to polls, the PM lambasted the Congress for a senior leader’s remarks on his mother.

“I have been defeating the Congress for the last 18 years at every turn. Today it has fallen to the level that it has dragged my mother in elections. Congress cannot fight Modi, that is why it is now abusing my mother,” Modi told a massive gathering of supporters in Chhatarpur.

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“Jis maa ko rajneeti ka ‘R’ maloom nahi hai, jo maa apni puja paath, ghar mein bhagwan ke smaran mein apna samay bita rahi hai us maa ko rajneeti mein ghaseet ke liye, (A mother who doesn’t know the ‘P’ of politics and spends her time praying to gods in her temple at home – they dragged that mother into politics),” said the PM adding that such an attack reflected the lack of agenda and the arrogance of Congress.

Modi’s reaction came two days after Congress leader Raj Babbar compared the devalued rate of the Indian rupee to the age of the PM’s mother.

“He [Modi] used to say that the rupee has fallen so much against the dollar that it was nearing the age of the then prime minister [Manmohan Singh]. Today, the rupee’s value has dropped so low, that it is inching closer to your [Modi’s] beloved mother’s age,” Babbar had said in Indore on Thursday. The PM’s mother, Heeraben Modi, is 98.

Recalling the decades of Congress rule before the arrival of the BJP in 2003, Modi asked the elders in the gathering if they would let their children go through the problems they faced during Congress’ rule.

“If you don’t want to live like that again, everyone will have to decide for sake of your children’s future, you won’t bring back Congress and make the mistake you and your parents made,” he said.

He also slammed the Congress for attacking Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

“Before abusing Shivraj ji, remember your ‘mama’ (maternal uncle) Quattrocchi and Anderson. One was given the permit to loot the security coffers of India and the other was flown out of India in a special airplane,” the PM said referring to Ottavio Quattrocchi of the Bofors scam and Warren Anderson of the Bhopal gas tragedy.

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly will go to polls on 28 November.