Alluding to Prime Minister Nitish Kumar’s change of face in the past, Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan delivered a word of warning to the electorate on Thursday and also sent a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party is fighting against the elections in alliance with the JD (U).
“Last time, the Honorable Nitish Kumar ji became Prime Minister with the blessings of Lalu Prasad ji and then betrayed him and became Prime Minister with the Prime Minister’s blessings. This time, he receives the blessings of Narendra Modi, but what if he jumps to the Lalu Prasad camp? ”Paswan tweeted in Hindi.
Nitish Kumar, who has been on the winning side in every election since 2005, is running for a fourth consecutive term. In his first two terms, in 2005 and 2010, he led the NDA to power in Bihar. In 2014, the CM refused to accept Narendra Modi as a candidate for prime minister and separated from the BJP. In 2015, he engineered an unlikely alliance by partnering with archrival Lalu Prasad’s RJD and forming the government once again. However, the bonhomie was short-lived and Nitish Kumar terminated ties with the RJD in 2017 and returned to the BJP fold.
On Wednesday, the three-time CM lost his cool when a part of the crowd began chanting “Lalu zindabad” slogans at his election rally. Stopping his speech midway, he scanned the section of the crowd where the chants were coming from and thundered “What are you saying?” As for greater effect, he repeated it two more times. He then demanded that the person identify himself by raising his hand. There was a brief pause and then someone yelled “chara chor hain sab, chara chor (forage thief)”, a reference to Lalu Prasad Yadav, who has been convicted in four forage scam cases and is serving prison terms from different periods . The head of the RJD is currently in treatment at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi.
“Yahan pe hall mat karo, vote nahi dena hai toh mat do (Don’t make chaos here. If you don’t want to vote for me, don’t do it)”, the CM warned the unknown interlocutors. Then he surrounded the crowd, asking if that slogan shout was allowed at the JD (U) rally, the crowd roared in favor of CM.
On the same day, Chirag Paswan blamed Nitish Kumar for “not developing the state at the same speed that other states have developed and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has envisioned.”
“Keeping talking about nali-gali (drains and lanes) and water for farms after 15 years in power is going to be useless,” Paswan said, referring to schemes introduced by Nitish Kumar to strengthen infrastructure. “Nali-gali is not a development criterion.”
The LJP had withdrawn from the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar and is contesting the polls on its own, citing ideological differences with Nitish Kumar’s party.
The LJP is contesting 137 seats in the 243-member assembly and has run candidates, including rebels from the BJP, in all the seats disputed by the JD (U).
Despite being young, the Jamui deputy said that he was running in the elections without caring about the outcome. “If Nitish Kumar is confident in his work, he should also have the courage to participate in elections on his own,” he had said.
The JD (U) is competing in 122 seats while the BJP is fighting in 121. The JD (U) has yielded seven seats to the alliance partner, Jitan Ram Manjhi, led by Hindustani Awam Morcha. The BJP has given 11 seats of its quota to the Vikassheel Insaan Party, led by Mukesh Sahni, the new entrant to the NDA alliance in Bihar.
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