As the Assembly elections in Bihar draw near, the war of words has escalated. On Monday, the Janata Dal (United) strongly refuted the BJP’s claim that the Nitish Kumar government’s performance plummeted after its exit from the NDA in 2013.
Lashing out at the BJP for “distorting figures”, the JD(U) warned that the NDA would review the reservation policy and bring in anti-farmer laws if it won the Bihar polls.
“If the NDA wins the Bihar polls, it will review both reservation as well as the Constitution. If we win, the State will march forward,” party general secretary K.C. Tyagi told journalists here, adding, “BJP wants to win Bihar polls to garner a majority in the Rajya Sabha to pass anti-farmer, anti-labour laws.”
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Referring to the statement of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat seeking a review of the reservation policy, Mr Tyagi stressed that the BJP would review the quota policy, even though the BJP has already distanced itself from Mr. Bhagwat’s remarks.
Mr.Tyagi and senior party leader Pawan Varma said that the Election Commission could not absolve itself of responsibility if Bihar moved towards communal polarisation and asked it to remain “vigilant” about the “huge flow of money” and attempts to rake up communal issues by the BJP.
Focusing on development issue, the two leaders said that any comparison of the growth rate in 2013-14 or 2014-15 (after the JD(U) broke with the BJP) with that of 2010-11 or 2011-12 (when the two parties were together in the government) to show that the growth of Bihar had suffered after the split with the BJP was a “myopic view” of selective data.
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They said that a recent study conducted by the BJP think tank, Public Policy Research Centre, headed by party vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, had been doing the rounds in the news media: “The study claims that Bihar had been doing better on all counts as long was JD(U) was in alliance with the BJP till June 2013. The study is steeped in selective and cherry picking data.”