Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday called upon party leaders and workers to tap the “rising tide of anger” against the BJP-led government, and work hard to give the people an alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “bogus promise of achche din (good days)”.

“We are meeting here today at a time when the crisis of governance in India under the Narendra Modi government – marked by corruption, total economic failure, incompetence and spread of social divisiveness – is at its peak,” he said, addressing a meeting of the Congress parliamentary party (CPP).

“There is a rising tide of anger against the current ruling dispensation that calls upon all of us to work very hard to give the people of India the alternative they deserve – an alternative to the bogus promise of Modiji’s achche din,” he said.

Former party president and CPP chairperson Sonia Gandhi did not attend the meeting.

Raising doubts about the safety of women and children under the Modi government, Gandhi said: “Reports of mass rape of little girls at Muzaffarpur in Bihar are horrifying. Lawmakers and leaders of the BJP and NDA are protecting the culprits.”

The Congress president said the women’s reservation bill will “remain a piece of paper” unless it was brought in the monsoon session of Parliament.

Gandhi also attacked the Modi government over the Rafale aircraft deal with France, terming it as the “corruption of the century”. “The Rafale scam, involving over Rs 1.3 lakh crores of public money and designed to bail out debt-ridden corporate cronies of Modiji, is symbolic of the true ‘sanskar’ of this government – Raam Naam Japna, Paraya Maal Apna,” he alleged.

Gandhi reiterated his charge that the present dispensation was purchasing the Rafale jet at Rs 1,670 crore per aircraft when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had finalised the amount at Rs 570 crore in its 2012 deal.

As many as 36 Rafale jets will be delivered to India between September 2019 and April 2022 as part of an inter-governmental pact signed with France in September 2016.