Further lowering the levels of decorum in Bihar’s election campaign speeches, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Monday likened chief minister and JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar to a rat and claimed the RJD-LJP alliance would be forming the state’s next government.
“The situation this time is not like the last election, when I and Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP chief) went apart, east and west, and Nitish entered through the gaping hole between us. He does not come out of the hole even when fumes are introduced into it. Even showing onions at the hole’s face fails to bring him out,” said Mr Yadav at Sherghati in Gaya district. Mr Paswan and former RJD minister Shakil Ahmed Khan, the RJD-LJP candidate from Sherghati, were accompanying Mr Yadav as he campaigned for the sixth and final phase of Assembly polls slated for November 20.
Going a step further in his practice of blaming Mr Kumar’s NDA government for the rise in Maoist penetration in Bihar, Mr Yadav put the blame on the chief minister for the Election Commission’s decision to hold polls in the Maoist-affected constituencies between 7 am and 3 pm instead of till 5 pm.
“Nitish has declared all your areas Maoist affected. On the one hand he claims to have improved law and order, but on the other hand he has arranged for the polls to be held between 7 am and 3 pm. You are a Maoist till 3 pm, and after that you are not,” said Mr Yadav.
“We are forming the government of the poor in Patna on November 24,” Mr Yadav said.
Mr Paswan attacked the government for nearly doubling the number of liquor shops in Bihar and said: “Our children learnt to drink in the past five years. They will also learn to gamble if the Nitish government gets another chance.”