AHMEDABAD: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday stepped up his attack on the Congress, saying Pakistan wants the opposition party to return to power and Rahul Gandhi as the next prime minister.

PM Modi’s comments, made in the course of an election rally in Gujarat’s Anand on Thursday, came a day after Ch Fawad Hussain, former Pakistani minister in the previous Imran Khan government, reposted a video of Rahul Gandhi on X, formerly Twitter, and applauded his speech.

“Pakistan is crying because the Congress is dying here. Pakistani leaders are praying for Congress, they want ‘shehzada’ (referring to Rahul Gandhi) as the next prime minister. It is not a surprise for we’ve long known Congress to be Pakistan’s ‘mureed’ (disciple). This revelation exposes the partnership between Pakistan and Congress. It’s evident that the country’s enemies desire a weak Indian government, not a strong one,” PM Modi said in Anand.

“The partnership between Pakistan and Congress has now been exposed completely. It shows that the country’s enemies want a weak government in India, not a strong one…A weak government which was there at the time of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. They want a corrupt government which was there before 2014. But Modi’s strong government neither bows down nor does it stop,” the PM added.

PM Modi said his government had punctured “tyres of Pakistan’s terror” and the country that had been exporting terror was now struggling to import atta (flour).

After Anand, PM Modi was scheduled to address three more rallies in Surendranagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar districts, covering 10 Lok Sabha seats.

Gujarat will vote in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 7.

PM Modi also took on the Opposition bloc over Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Maria Alam Khan’s appeal at a Farrukhabad meeting on Monday to do “vote jihad”, asserting that “vote jehad is necessary for the minority community”.

“Together do vote jehad — with intelligence, without being sentimental and with silence,” she said in the presence of her uncle, Congress leader Salman Khurshid.

“Now, the INDI alliance calls for ‘vote jihad’. We have so far heard about ‘love jihad’ and ‘land Jihad’. This (vote jihad) is said by a person who belonged to an educated Muslim family, not by someone who studied in a madrasa. I hope you all know what the meaning of jihad is. This is an insult to democracy and not a single Congress leader has condemned it,” he said.

PM Modi also accused the Congress of planning to amend the Constitution to provide reservations to Muslims and dared the Congress to rebut him.