On Sunday, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh said he had changed the definition of politics in Madhya Pradesh by providing a government that cared for the people, and that he would be missed when he was not around.
The chief minister referred to the constituents as his family and the women as his sisters.
If you want to run for president, you must run for president. You all are my family, he said at a meeting in parliament's Sehore district.
The Congress interpreted the Chief Minister's emotional speech as an allusion to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party's reluctance to name him the party's chief ministerial candidate.
The BJP has said that the election will be contested under the 'collective leadership' of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Chouhan.
Congress leaders interpreted President Chouhan's remarks as an acknowledgement that his party had sidelined him.
Minister of state KK Mishra, who is currently in charge of the Congress Committee, was quoted by Hindustan Times as saying.
MP BJP spokeswoman Hitesh Vajpayee said the Congress leaders were trying to give the chief minister's emotional outreach to people a spin.
How can you get a brother to like you? This is true that nobody can be as good as Shivraj. But Congress leaders are getting happy after listening to this emotional speech and trying to give it a wrong spin. They don't know that their dreams won't come true in this election, Vajpayee said. 'The people of the state will remember his [Shivraj Singh Chouhan] lies and failed promises,' Kamal Nath, the former chief minister of the Supreme Court, said in a statement on condition of anonymity.