JD-U blames Opp. for protests
Even as Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday faced more public protests during his ongoing state-wide tour and a curfew-like situation prevailed at a town where protests had turned violent a day before, the ruling JD(U) accused the Opposition of “conspiring” the protests and the media of siding with them.
A section of the audience at Kumar’s public meeting at Madhepura, allegedly members of an organisation of agitating contractual para-teachers, threw slippers at the stage of before his speech began. The police, who had arrested 23 para-teachers from the venue earlier in the day fearing protests, dispersed them and prevented a possible repeat of Thursday’s violent protests at Khagaria, where nearly ten vehicles and a part of the district magistrate’s office were set afire.
Ranvir Yadav, a controversial JD(U) leader and husband of party MLA Poonam Devi, who had brandished a carbine at protesters at Khagaria and allegedly fired in the air to frighten them away, justified his act while senior JD(U) leaders in Patna claimed he was not a member of the party.
“Would it have been proper if the CM were killed like Benazir Bhutto? I am ready for any sacrifice to protect him,” said Yadav, a local strongman and former MLA who was earlier convicted in a murder case. His pictures were on the JD(U)’s posters and banners. Even the CM had publicly said that he could pass through the unruly protesters and reach the dais due to Yadav’s help.
The JD(U) described the violent protests at Khagaria as an attempt on the CM’s life. “We have concluded that those protests were a deliberate conspiracy in the name of youth power and it was possible that the CM could have been killed,” said JD(U) national spokesman Shivanand Tiwari.
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