New Delhi, Apr 10 (IANS): With Congress manifesto for 2024 polls facing an all-round attack by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a scathing counter to the ruling party's "ploy" to target it over a "non-relevant" issue, while accusing it of deflecting the attention from real issues in poll season.

Taking strong exception to BJP's repeated charge of Muslim League imprint on the Congress manifesto, he said, "barrage of lies from multiple political stages won't change the history".

Taking to his X handle, Rahul said that history was a witness to "who played the patriot and who played the traitor". Without naming the BJP, he said that Congress has a long history of fighting for the country's freedom and standing for its unity while there were others who aligned with the forces that wanted to divide India.

"During the Quit India movement, Congress leaders and workers had filled the jails and put their lives in jeopardy while there were others who stood with anti-India forces," he said.

"When scores of Congress leaders were pushed behind bars, who were those forming governments in provinces with the blessings of Britishers,?" he asked.

Rahul's rejoinder to BJP's "Muslim imprint charge" comes a day after party President Mallikarjun Kharge accused the ruling party of distracting attention from real issues.

Kharge on Tuesday said that the BJP was going to lose the elections and hence was "acting out of fear".

The Congress had also raised a complaint with the Election Commission of India against Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the same.

Another Congress leader Pramod Tiwari also accused the BJP of "instigating Hindu-Muslim divide" ahead of elections.

Speaking to media persons in Mirzapur on Tuesday, Tiwari said that everyone knows how the BJP ideologue Syama Prasad Mukherjee formed his governments in Bengal, Sindh, in the 1940s in coalition with the Muslim League.

Notably, PM Modi has been at the forefront in targeting the grand old party over its manifesto resembling the Muslim League ideology. Rather, he was the first one to launch frontal attack on Congress, after its manifesto released on April 5 and accused it of having a stamp of the Muslim League.

Rahul also reiterated his charge that this election was a fight between two ideologies - one who wants to unify the nation and the other who wants to divide it.