Even before the Prime Minister Narendra Modi began addressing a public rally in Banka (Bihar) on Friday, his rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav were ready with fireworks.
Lalu launched off with a set of rhetorical question/answers on twitter which he has taken to using with rising frequency during the ongoing election campaign in poll-bound Bihar.
“Bapu ke hatyare Godse ko kaun pujta hai? RSS. RSS ko kaun pujta hai? BJP. BJP ko kaun chala raha hai? Modi. To hatyara kaun hua? (Who worships Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse? It’s the RSS. Who worships the RSS? It’s the BJP. Who runs the BJP these days? It’s Modi. Who is the assassin in that case?)” asked Lalu.
He then proceeded to warn the people of Bihar against Modi’s “false propaganda”.
“Savdhan Bihariyo – Aaj se jumlon ke ustaad, vadon ke bajigar dwara jumlon ke free, avishwasniya, avishwasi daur me aur bade bade jumle feke jayenge (People of Bihar, beware – today the king of gasbags will cook up even bigger and grander stories),” said Lalu. “Yuva rootha, Modi jhootha… Pehle hi do crore yuvaon ko rojgar ken am par peeth mein khanjar khopa ja chukka hai. Bihar mein kaun yuva neta hai inke paas? Bataye (Modi has lied to the youth. He promised two crore jobs and then backstabbed them. Let him tell us who their ‘young’ leader in Bihar is).”
“Modijee, baketi bahut ho chuki. Chalo kisi aisi yojna ka nam batao jis se yuvaon ka kalian hua ho. Janab, bhashno se pet nahin bharta (Enough of your boasts. Tell us which of your policies has helped the youth of this country. Your speeches don’t fill our stomach),” Lalu went on, in a series of tweets while the PM was speaking.
The Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who himself was addressing rallies in Suryagraha, Munger, Begusarai and Morva, took time off to question Modi’s silence on the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comments with regard to reservation policy.
“The silence of Modi on Mohan Bhagwat’s recent statements about reservation policy gives rise to suspicions that his government is re-examining reservation policy under pressure from the RSS,” said Nitish Kumar.
On the PM’s comparison between Bihar and neighbouring Jharkhand about Kala Azar deaths, the Bihar CM said, “Bizarre rationale of comparising Bihar and Jharkhand due to Kala Azar. If nothing else, before speaking at least on this subject, Modiji should have consulted his colleague C. P. Thakur.” C. P. Thakur is a Bihar Rajya Sabha MP who was Health Minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government and is known to have done seminal work on Kala Azar in his capacity as a public health expert.