Unlike Robin Hood who robbed the rich and distributed the spoils among the economically challenged, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past four years have exploited the common man and further enriched the affluent, Congress spokesperson, Shakil Ahmed said on Friday.

However, he appeared to differ from the PCC leadership’s perception that chief minister Mamata Banerjee despite joining the ranks of secular forces is actually towing the BJP’s line by yielding ground to the saffron forces in the state.

The Congress leader was in the state to launch campaign against the BJP-led NDA government on completion of four years in office. Going hammer and tongs at the Modi government on the occasion of Biswasghatakta Diwas, Ahmed said that the NDA regime had been a period of broken promises as the election promises made in 2014 by a prime ministerial aspirant have turned out to be false ones.

Jobs have not been created as promised, Ahmed said during a procession from SN Banerjee Road to Esplanade on Friday. There has not been any waiver of farm loans, though it was a different in case of borrowings by some of the leading industrialists, he said. After all, it was these businessmen who had funded Modi’s rise to power, Ahmed alleged.

The Union government is yet to take steps to check price rise, the Congress leader said. The NDA government does not seem to have any plan of action to tackle this “economic emergency” which is having its fallout on the common man, he said.

Good effects of demonetisation is yet to be known, Ahmed said. But the fact remains that the common man was adversely affected by it, he felt.

The Rafael deal cost the nation much more than it should have done, but we have no idea what was the component of the hidden cost in this crucial arms deal, he said.

Skirting the question of the PCC charge of the chief minster being soft on BJP, the Congress spokesman said that secular credentials are possesed by all leaders who shared the podium at Bengaluru on the occassion of Karnataka chief minister H D Kumarswamy’s swearing-in.

We will give importance to the views of the PCC in matters of the state, he said, when being asked about PCC’s different stand in a bid not to rub the state unit the wrong way.