New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi accused Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of following in the Centre’s footsteps and making thousands “hollow promises” that he hadn’t kept. The Congress president launched his party’s campaign in the state with a stinging attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister.

Gandhi had a Sachin Tendulkar analogy in his barb. When Sachin Tendulkar, the prolific run-scorer across all formats of cricket, came on the pitch, the Congress president said, everyone knew that he would score runs for the country and was known as a run-making machine.

“There is a similar kind of a machine in Madhya Pradesh... Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It churns out promises, hollow promises,” Gandhi said at a meeting of party workers. At last count, the Congress president said Chouhan had made 21,000 announcements and promises.

“On the one hand, PM Modi makes a hollow promise, that farmers will get the right prices... What he says gets repeated here,” Gandhi said before he got down to lashing out at the central government for the Rafale fighter jet deal and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya’s flying out of the country in 2016.

The Congress president, who has led a sharp campaign against the government over Vijay Mallya’s exit over the last week, also accused the centre of going soft on industrialists who don’t repay loans, not farmers.

If an industrialist doesn’t repay a loan, it is called a non-performing asset. But when it is a farmer who misses on repayments, he is called a defaulter, Gandhi said, promising a farm loan waiver in Madhya Pradesh and beyond if the Congress is voted back to power.

To the thousands of party workers who cheered him, Rahul Gandhi promised that their interest would be his top priority, next only to the interest of people.