Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said he had asked his officers to look into charges by BJP leader Arun Jaitley that a specific alert was sent to Bihar police by Intelligence Bureau with regard to Narendra Modi’s Patna rally.
“Mr. Jaitley is a responsible man...I have asked my officers to look into whatever he is highlighting,” Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of a JD(U) convention in Rajgir.
The Chief Minister said whatever he said after the blast yesterday was based on the information given to him by state officials.
Kumar had said yesterday that there was no intelligence input about possibility of blasts either by the Centre or state intelligence and that there was no laxity in security arrangements for the BJP rally.
“We may be political rivals, but can never allow such an unpleasant event to happen at a political rally,” he had said.
In Delhi, Mr. Jaitley, who was present at the Patna rally, claimed that a specific alert was issued to Bihar government and accused the Nitish Kumar government of lapses that led to the serial blasts.
Refuting claims of Bihar government that no alert was issued by the Centre about the rally, he said, “This does not appear to be factually correct...A specific alert was sent to the Bihar police by the central Intelligence Bureau on October 23, 2013 with regard to the rally to be addressed by Shri Narendra Modi in Patna.”
He also charged the Bihar government with being soft on terror due to vote-bank politics and accused it of adopting a “casual and callous” approach while demanding a high-level probe and a review of security of BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
Six persons were killed and 83 injured in seven low intensity blasts in and around the venue of Mr. Modi’s rally at historic Gandhi Maidan in Patna yesterday shortly before he addressed the huge gathering.
