BJP president Nitin Gadkari today said Congress-led UPA government was worse than "dacoits of Madhya Pradesh".

"The dacoits of Madhya Pradesh were better than the Congress-led government at the Centre...A Rs 4.38 lakh crore scam was unheard of before," Gadkari said.

He was addressing 'Yuva Sankalp' bike rally organised by the youth wing of BJP to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekanand here.

"The list of scams (which took place during UPA regime) is long...Rs 76,000 crore CWG scam, Rs 1.86 lakh crore coal scam and 1.76 lakh crore 2G scam. Had anyone heard of such figures of scams before?" Gadkari said.

"These are the figures not given by any BJP leader, but the Comptroller and Auditor General. Congress has no concern for the people of the country," he said.

Inflation was soaring because of the rampant corruption, he said.

Gadkari also said the country's dependence on crude oil import should decrease, and people should embrace alternatives such as ethanol-mixed petrol, as in Brazil.

"Instead of emptying alcohol bottles in your stomach, it would be better if you pour them into the fuel tank of your vehicle to reduce dependence on import of crude," the BJP chief jokingly said.

The 21st century belonged to India, but the people must put "knowledgeable leaders" at the helm of affairs, he said.

He praised Madhya Pradesh government for its schemes such as Ladli Laxmi and Teerth-Darshan, and for the 18 per cent growth rate in the agriculture sector.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on this occasion that his government was committed to providing round-the-clock power to the villages by 2013, and urged the youth to take advantage of it by setting up village-based industries.

Later in the day, speaking at Pavagadh in Gujarat at Chief Minister Narendra Modi's campaign rally, Gadkari again said that UPA had "looted" the country's coffers like the infamous "dacoits of Chambal valley".

"Congress can find money in the sky in the form of 2G spectrum scam, on earth -- from Commonwealth Games, and beneath the earth, by the way of coal block allocation," he said.

"When Jawaharlal Nehru became Prime Minister of the country, he said he will remove the poverty. When Indira Gandhi come to power, she also gave the slogan 'remove poverty'. When her son Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister, he also did the same thing... Now Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are also trying to do that -- to remove poverty by going to the houses of the poor," he said sarcastically.

He also said that there had been attempts to spread canards against the Gujarat government, but "I want to say that Narendra Modi government has not done any injustice to anyone on the basis of caste, creed, language or religion".