Bhopal, Nov. 13: The ad war has hotted up. For the vote war.

If it’s “counting machine” for the Congress, the BJP has bunged in a “blindfolded” quintet.

The challenger and the incumbent have both sounded the bugle for the battle for Madhya Pradesh, bringing out “provocative” advertisements in the lead-up to elections in the heartland state, which votes on November 25.

The Opposition Congress today inserted an ad in newspapers across the state that showed the silhouettes of a man and a woman, with the woman saying: “Kyon zaroorat padi note ginne wali machine ki?” (What was the need for a currency counting machine?)

The man’s silhouette resembles what a silhouette of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan would look like.

Without naming Chouhan, a heading on top of the half-page advertisement laced with innuendos says: “Mukhiya ke munh par tala, lalchhi parivar ne Madhya Pradesh ko loot dala.” (The chief has mouth shut while greedy family has looted Madhya Pradesh.)

Not that the BJP has lagged in the ad war.

An advertisement, one of a series the ruling party has been running against the Congress, shows Union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath, P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari with eyes blindfolded. “Itihas ki sabse andhi sarkar ke mantri ab dikhana chhate hain Madhya Pradesh ko bhavish ka sapna,” the ad says. Translated, it would read: ministers in history’s most blind government are trying to show dreams of the future to Madhya Pradesh.

Chouhan had last year filed a criminal defamation case against leader of Opposition Ajay Singh, who had reportedly described his wife Sadhna as a “money-counting machine” at two rallies.

The Chouhans had demanded Rs 1 crore in damages from Ajay. The case has made little progress.

Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh, too, has repeatedly referred to currency-counting machines. “It is now known that there are three currency-counting machines at Chouhan’s residence. I am sure that these machines have not been purchased to count the salary that Chouhan gets,” Digvijaya had commented.

Chouhan, who is banking on his “clean image”, has repeatedly said that neither his wife nor his in-laws interfere in politics or administrative decisions. Yesterday, the chief minister and other senior state BJP leaders approached the Election Commission, accusing the Congress of levelling “baseless allegations”.

“They (the Congress) have come out with a figure of Rs 1.46 lakh crore scam against the BJP government in the state…. Maybe, they have arrived at the figure by the scams like 1.76 and 1.86 lakh crore and therefore reached at 1.46 lakh crore,” Chouhan said, reacting to the state Congress’s “chargesheet” against his government.

The allusion was to the presumptive losses in the spectrum and coal block allocation controversies.