The irrepressible RJD chief, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, has asked Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit to build more public urinals in the national capital instead of carping about the swarms of migrant Biharis dirtying the city.
“If a Bihari works and lives in Delhi, how can chief minister Sheila Dikshit expect him to urinate in Bihar? She should build more public urinals in Delhi instead of complaining,” said Mr Yadav while speaking of the insult meted out to migrant Biharis in Delhi, Maharashtra and Assam. “If I were Bihar’s chief minister, leaders of these states would not dare insult Biharis,” added Mr Yadav in his campaign speech in Nawada on Tuesday.
Migration of Biharis to prosperous states in search of jobs has been an issue in Bihar’s ongoing Assembly polls, and Congress leaders such as general secretary Rahul Gandhi and Ms Sheila Dikshit have constantly blamed the Nitish Kumar government for the continuing migration of Biharis despite the claims about the state achieving development milestones.
Bihar’s ruling NDA, which claims to have checked migration to a large extent, has attacked Mr Rahul Gandhi for his comments on migration recently, saying migration of Biharis has been continuing for over 60 years and that the Nehru-Gandhi family’s scion should “do his homework before speaking”.
Mr Yadav, who promises to “make Bihar shine just as well as I did to Indian Railways as the railway minister,” is known as much for his tall promises as his humorous statements. He sent his audience in Nawada into peals of laughter by offering to serve people dishes of rehu and tengra — two kinds of fish — when the RJD-LJP alliance came to power.
On Wednesday, Mr Lalu Yadav claimed the ruling JD(U)-BJP alliance would “fail to open an account in Bihar” in the polls. “Everywhere in the state (Yadav uttered the names of nearly two dozen places) it is the lantern and the bungalow (the election symbols of the RJD and the LJP respectively) are shining. Bihar is hot in all directions,” he said at a campaign speech near Patna.