NEW DELHI – Prime Minister Narendra Modi made unsubstantiated allegations that India’s main opposition party received illegal cash from billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, escalating his rhetoric in the middle of a heated election battle.

Mr Modi made the claims at a rally in southern Telangana state on May 8, hinting that Mr Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader in the Indian National Congress, had stopped criticising Mr Adani and Mr Ambani in his speeches because his party was receiving money from them.

Mr Modi did not provide any evidence to back up the allegation.

“For five years you cussed out Ambani and Adani, and overnight the cussing has stopped?” Mr Modi told the crowd in Hindi, without mentioning Mr Gandhi by name. 

Congress party officials said Mr Modi’s comments suggest he may be concerned about the voting trend for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) so far and is turning against his allies. 

Both Mr Ambani and Mr Adani have widespread business interests in the country that align with the government’s policy agenda.

Mr Gandhi has consistently questioned Mr Modi’s links with the tycoons and criticised policies he says have favoured wealthy businessmen over the poor, resulting in widening inequality levels in the country.

At a campaign rally on May 7 in Jharkhand, Mr Gandhi said the media’s attention is focused on Mr Ambani, Mr Adani and Mr Modi, but not the poor. 

Mr Modi, who is seeking a third term in elections that run until June 1, rarely mentions the billionaires names in his speeches.

On May 8, he alleged that they had been funding Mr Gandhi and the Congress party since the elections began on April 19.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said on social media platform X that Mr Modi is “shaking” and “attacking his own friends”.

Mr Jairam Ramesh, the party’s national spokesman, said the billionaires have benefited from Mr Modi’s policies and the opposition will continue to push for investigations into the Prime Minister’s links to the businessmen.

Representatives for Mr Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Adani Group were not available to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.  

Mr Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, a policy think-tank, said Mr Modi may be trying to deflect attention from his links to the wealthy businessmen and what they represent in a country of wide income disparities. 

“Part of the reason is to muddy the waters and to try to delink the public perception of the BJP and Modi from the public imagination of what Adani and Ambani do,” he said.

“They represent extreme inequality. They flaunt their wealth.”

Election funding in India is notoriously opaque.

Only a small percentage is declared publicly, according to election watchdogs, with the vast amount unaccounted for and labelled black money.

In April, the Election Commission of India said it confiscated 46.5 billion rupees ($755 million) of illicit money and goods in the run-up to voting.

Mr Modi’s comments come a day after India held the third phase of its seven-phase elections.

Mr Modi and BJP officials have ramped up attacks on the opposition that have drawn condemnation for being discriminatory.

At a rally in April, Mr Modi told supporters that if voted to power, the Congress party would redistribute wealth to Muslims and “infiltrators”.

This week, the BJP in Karnataka province posted an animated video that showed the Congress party favouring Muslims over other minority groups.

The Election Commission of India on May 7 ordered X to remove the video.

Dr Apoorvanand, a professor at the University of Delhi who goes by one name and writes regularly on politics, said Mr Modi’s comments suggest he is trying to “confuse the electors, muddy the waters so that voters cannot think clearly”. BLOOMBERG