By IANS
Patna : Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Sunday challenged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to dissolve the state assembly and hold elections, accusing him of betraying people with false promises of a crime-free Bihar and failing to provide good governance.
Addressing a massive rally here, Lalu Prasad and his wife, former chief minister Rabri Devi, also called upon the people to uproot the anti-poor National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for its failures on all front.
The massive turnout at the Chetawani (warning) rally seems to have moved Lalu Prasad to say: “The days of the Nitish Kumar government are numbered. It will fall soon.”
He questioned the chief minister’s claims of sushashan (good governance) by describing his rule as ‘kushasan’. “When Nitish was voted to power by the people two years ago he promised to make Bihar crime-free in three months and to provide sushashan, but his government has become the best example of kushasan,” Lalu said.
He said the popularity of the chief minister was at its lowest, the law and order had collapsed and there was hardly any development work going on in the state that was yet to recover from monsoon floods.
“Nitish Kumar is an accidental chief minister and his government has failed on all fronts,” Lalu Prasad said.
He asked Nitish Kumar to snap ties with “communal forces” like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) if he intended to be a “secular leader”.
“Till date Nitish Kumar was sitting in the lap of the BJP and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Now he should make his stand clear by demanding action against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the killings of hundreds of Muslims in 2002,” Lalu Prasad said.
He spoke in his chaste Hindi to criticise his bete noir, drawing repeated applause from the massive gathering of people including a large number of women.
His rally was the first after his party was ousted from power in the state in 2005. He had organised several rallies here when the RJD was in power in Bihar from 1990 to 2005.
“This massive gathering of people from all castes and creeds has broken my previous records of rallies,” Lalu Prasad said.
The RJD made every effort to ensure a large gathering. It booked 35 special trains – Lalu Prasad clarified the party had paid in cash for that – and hundreds of light and heavy motor vehicles to ferry people from across the state and neighbouring areas.
Party activists literally painted Patna green – the colour of the party. Upbeat RJD leaders and party workers put up hundreds of welcome arches, hoardings, flags and banners – all in green.
The massive turnout of people, mostly from rural areas of Bihar and Jharkhand, looked like a celebration of sorts – almost all roads were packed with crowds.
“RJD’s green billboards and graffiti are visible everywhere in Patna,” said Sahdeo Manjhi, a rickshaw-puller and Lalu Prasad sympathiser.
The green arches and hoardings virtually took over the Gandhi Maidan, Dak Bungalow Square, Ashok Rajpath, Boring Road and Station Square.
Shakeel Ahmad Khan, a former Communist leader, said green is to the RJD what red is to the Communists and saffron to the BJP.
“Yes, the entire Patna has turned hara-bhara (full of green),” Khan said.
Pictures of Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi were visible on over the city.