Patna, Nov 3 (PTI) Gloves were off in poll-bound Bihar on Monday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party general secretary Priyanka Vadra were among those slugging it out on the penultimate day of campaign for the first phase of the elections.
Modi addressed rallies in Saharsa and Katihar districts, raising to eight the total number of election meetings held by him, in addition to a road show in the state capital a day ago.
The PM continued to fish in troubled waters of the INDIA bloc, alleging that Congress agreed to declare Tejashwi Yadav as chief minister after a ‘katta’ (country-made gun) was pointed at its head by the RJD headed by Lalu Prasad, whose pictures, Modi alleged, were missing from party posters in a bid to “hide his sins”.
Shah, whose number of rallies since polls were announced on October 6 had reached the double-digit mark some time back, addressed three more election meetings in the districts of Sheohar, Madhubani and Sitamarhi, all bordering Nepal.
The former BJP president predicted an emphatic victory for the NDA and claimed that on November 14, the date of counting of votes, “it will be clear by 1 pm” that the INDIA bloc has been “wiped out”.
Widely regarded as the party’s principal strategist, Shah stayed back in Madhubani to enjoy a traditional Maithili dinner. A video clip shared by news channels showed him breaking bread with JD(U) working president Sanjay Kumar Jha, who belongs to Madhubani, among others.
Kharge addressed his maiden rally for the elections in Vaishali district, followed shortly afterwards, by a press conference in Patna.
He charged Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) president, with “sitting in the lap of pro-Manu Smriti BJP” and claimed that the state’s longest-serving CM’s absence at rallies of the prime minister, and the road show, pointed towards a “conspiracy” by the saffron party, which allegedly wanted to deny him another term in office.
However, JD(U) national spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Prasad slammed Kharge and reminded him that Tejashwi Yadav, too, was absent from the rally of Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Sunday.
Vadra, who addressed rallies in Saharsa and Lakhisarai districts and held a road show in Samastipur, charged Modi with whining about alleged insults heaped on him by opposition leaders and suggested that the PM set up an ‘Apmaan Mantraalay’, a ministry dedicated to dealing with his perceived humiliations.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, one of the most sought-after campaigners in the BJP camp, carried out a whirlwind campaign, addressing four rallies in as many districts.
Known for speeches laced with acerbic wit, Yogi lampooned Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, his principal rival in Uttar Pradesh, calling them “Pappu, Tappu and Akku”.
He also compared them to “three monkeys of Mahatma Gandhi” and alleged the opposition leaders “can neither see, nor hear nor speak of any good work done by NDA”.
The Samajwadi Party supremo, who has also been campaigning in Bihar, hit back with a post on X in which he did not name Yogi, but targeted the monk-turned-politician for having “changed his dwelling place, attire and even name” and declared that he will be voted out in the next assembly polls in the adjoining state.
When Tejashwi Yadav was asked about the PM’s ‘katta’ jibe and the claim that Prasad’s photos were not on RJD posters, he reacted with disgust, saying, “Never before has a prime minister used such language”, and asked Modi to have some respect for his father, “who did a fantastic job as a Railway Minister”.
The day also saw a road show by former Union minister Smriti Irani, a firebrand BJP leader who has been lying low since she lost her Amethi seat to a less fancied Congress candidate in Lok Sabha polls last year.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)