Against the backdrop of EU Ambassadors engaging with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Congress's Renuka Chowdhary today dubbed him as "anti-poor and anti-women" and one "who does not know how to spell agriculture".

The party also sought to project BJP as a divided house saying as to why it should waste time to know who is BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate when there were seven contenders in the opposition party. At the AICC briefing, party spokesperson Renuka Chowdhary sidestepped questions on the "clean chit" given to Modi by the European Union and instead asked whether the controversial Chief Minister has got visa from the US.

"He has no respect for his own wife or someone else's wife.... He is anti-poor, anti-rural development, anti-women. He lives in urban fantasies... and he does not know how to spell agriculture," Chowdhary said.

Asked about the reported statements of JD-U chief Sharad Yadav implying that the corporates were backing Modi, Chowdhary said that the JD-U leader was intelligent and was not given to making accusation without substantive evidence.

The Congress attack came at a time when there has been growing chorus in sections of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar to make Modi as PM candidate of the party and reports of envoys of EU countries having a lunch with Modi as part of efforts to engage with him. Yesterday, the AICC had sought to project Modi as a state leader and dismissed suggestion that he had hijacked Rahul Gandhi's agenda of connecting with youth.

Two days back, the Gujarat Chief Minister used a college platform here to project himself nationally saying his focus was on development politics and not that of vote-bank, which he said has "ruined" the nation. On the other hand the European Union, which has ended over a decade-old boycott of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, has been told by him that the 2002 riots in the state were unfortunate.

Modi took the unusual step of driving to Germany embassy here to a luncheon meeting with envoys and representatives of several European Union member countries that was hosted by German Ambassador Michael Steiner. The meeting remained undisclosed for one month till EU Ambassador Joao Cravinho went public yesterday.

Steiner told reporters today that he had always maintained that Germany had no intention of interfering in Gujarat Assembly elections and that it will take a "fresh look" after the election results. "That is exactly what we were doing and part of it is to talk directly to Chief Minister Modi. India is a democracy. We respect democratic institutions. We respect election results in India and we have full trust in its judicial system. Because of this respect and trust, we are now in a new phase," the German Ambassador said.