RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav may be still officially with the Congress-led UPA, but his keenness to win back power in poll-bound Bihar and the challenges thrown on his way by the Congress have forced him to attack the grand old party as hard as the ruling JD(U)-BJP combine.
From his early dismissals of the Congress as a non-entity and “vote-katwa (spoiler of other parties’ chances)” in Bihar to his latest allegations that the Congress and the JD(U) have secret links, Mr Yadav’s attacks on the Congress had carefully left out all references to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. But the rising vigour of the Congress before the October-November Assembly polls in Bihar prompted Mr Yadav to mount a veiled attack on Mrs Gandhi on Wednesday.
“I was one of the few leaders who had openly defended her (Sonia Gandhi) when her foreign origin had turned against her some years back. Even her own party’s leaders were quiet. But now they are trying to spoil me. You, the people (in Bihar), must remain vigilant about such people,” said Mr Yadav, former railway minister in the first UPA government, at a ceremony at the RJD’s state headquarters organised to induct two JD(U) leaders into the party.
With an apparent aim of weaning Bihar’s Muslim voters from the Congress, Mr Yadav said the Congress-led Central government had been wilfully sitting on the 17-year-old Supreme Court order directing payment of salaries to imams of government-aided mosques.
“I forced the government to consider this issue appropriately last month,” he said.
Mr Yadav also accused the Congress of secretly planning to get the contentious Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill 2010 passed and claimed credit for ensuring its withdrawal.