India’s two leading ladies in politics, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati of the BSP, on Thursday took on Bihar’s ruling JD(U)-BJP alliance and its greatest opponent, the RJD-LJP combine, in passionate campaign speeches heard by thousands of voters.
The Congress and the BSP are the only two parties that have fielded candidates in all the 243 constituencies in Bihar’s ongoing Assembly polls and have not entered into an alliance with any other party.
As the third phase of the Assembly polls was in progress in north-west Bihar, Mrs Gandhi and Ms Mayawati addressed crowded public meetings to seek votes for their respective parties in the remaining three phases of polls.
Ridiculing the tall claims of development made by the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government in Bihar, Mrs Gandhi said at Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur, which has a sizeable Muslim population, that the large disparity between the claims and the ground realities was like the proverbial elephant’s teeth. “Haathi ke daant khane ke aur, dikhane ke aur” (The elephant’s visible teeth are not the same as those with which the animal chews its food), she said employing a popular Hindi idiom.
“The Congress never discriminates with people based on their caste and creed. The Congress is a secular party, a people’s party. We are now making a law to ensure nobody remains hungry. This is yet another achievement of our government. But the central government’s welfare programmes are bearing no fruit in Bihar,” said Mrs Gandhi.
Without naming Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mrs Gandhi said: “These people show you big dreams, golden dreams, but in reality offer nothing on the ground”. The Congress national president apparently alluded to the promises made in the manifestos of Bihar’s two big regional parties.