Condemning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement made at an election rally in Karnataka on Thursday that the Congress governments in the past have insulted Field Marshal KM Cariappa and General K Thimayya, the Opposition said fear, frustration and follies of the BJP grow as the date of election comes closer in the State.

The Congress termed the statement superficial and blamed the lack of knowledge of Modi in history and the incapacity of those who help the Prime Minister to prepare speeches for such “mistakes” in the speech. “All this whataboutery is happening to distract people from the real issues like the Cauvery issue, atrocities against women and Dalits, etc,” party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said here on Friday.

In a separate statement on party’s Twitter handle, the Congress said prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sent General Thimmayya to Korea as the head of UN’s peace-keeping force. “He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1954. He was appointed as the Chief of Army Staff in 1957 superseding officers senior to him,” the release claimed.

It also said that Field Marshal KM Cariappa was made the Army Chief 1949. “He was appointed as the High Commissioner to Australia and New Zealand in 1953. He was conferred the rank of Field Marshal in 1986 by the Rajiv Gandhi Government,” the party said.

“Modi was speaking by referring to his notes while ‘creating’ an alternative history of our military heroes. Clearly, those notes would have been from RSS history books which qualify best as fiction,” said CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.

The Congress also objected to PM’s terming Bengaluru as valley of sin. “Karnataka is a birthplace of IT giants, a technological hub, a real start up hub, and the PM ignores the S for superior, the I for Information Technology and N for novelty, and calls it a valley of sin,” Singhvi said.

Singhvi said a recent academic study by a senior researcher of the RBI finds that rural wages have suffered a “significant decelartion” from 2014.

“On the one hand, wages are low, but what is more important is that the real wages have also suffered a decline because of high inflation. Since the Modi government assumed power, there is a 67 per cent price decline in international crude price, and in India, there is a 110 per cent rise in petrol/diesel prices,” he said.

“You don’t create employment or take care of farmers but criticise a city like Bengaluru and a state like Karnataka. We take SIN as Superior, Innovation and Novelty. Please stop humiliating the people of Bengaluru and Karnataka for the sake of politics,” he added.