Should Congress leave its Quid Pro Quo strategy?

Amid Gujrat elections, lots of things are said and heard. Sometimes its funny, sometimes offending. Sometimes it makes one think - What exactly is happening here?
Recently two such instances happened, with major contribution coming from Congress. First instance is of calculation error to indicate price rise in BJP's tenure.

Now this could have been a good strategy by Congress, but it fizzled out for a gross calculation error of putting % increase in price by extra 100 points. People made mockery of it and then Rahul Gandhi took a big step of apologizing and accepting the mistake made. But in doing that too, he tried to look down BJP by initiating his tweet with words like "Unlike Narendrabhai, ------"

Was that really necessary? Couldn't he just accept his mistake and not try to bring BJP or relevant things in it.

Second instance just happened yesterday. Manishankar Aiyar called the PM with the word "Neech". In what context, I do not know. Compared to calculation error, this apparently is a bigger mistake made. Narendra Modi, did try to cash in on it immediately in his speech during a Surat rally. Rahul Gandhi once again came up strongly criticizing the tone and language used by Mr. Aiyar. But he again did not missed the chance to point out that BJP also use such foul language.

As such strong words are coming from the to be president of the party, they also had to act and so did they. They immediately suspended his primary membership of the party. This was announced by Mr. Surjewala and here he also tried to show off  by notifying that Congress did take the action on Mr. Aiyar but questioned if Mr. Modi has the courage to do the same. 

I am just wondering what exactly is the Congress trying to achieve through these acts. If they are sincere about these apologies and actions, they should do only that much. Every time by comparing their actions with the BJP's action, they are actually highlighting their actions as meant solely gaining popularity and show BJP as downgraded. This is not going to help in the long run. Congress is a party in crisis. They need to struggle and work hard to get back to original form rather than comparing with strong opponent party. Like BJP at different times pitched the ideas of Hindutva, development model, good governance and worked with these ideas. Same way, Congress need something original and not just comparison.