Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in Gaya on Sunday at the second of his four public meetings in the State ahead of the Assembly elections later this year, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad took to Twitter to give a point-by-point rebuttal of the speech.
A PM ought to be a statesman & must desist from making statements which denigrates forefathers of a particular culture & state.
— Lalu Prasad Yadav (@laluprasadrjd) >August 6, 2015Responding to Mr. Modi’s veiled reference to Mr. Prasad’s stint in jail where, he said, “one only picks up criminal behaviour”, Mr. Kumar said: “It is ironic that the Prime Minister is referring to the effects of a stint in jail right after the speech of his party president Amit Shah.” The hint was at Mr. Shah’s stay in jail in 2010 in the Sohrabuddin case. He referred to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s advice to Mr. Modi to follow “Raj Dharma” during the Gujarat riots of 2002.
Mr. Prasad said: “I belong to a community whose god [Krishna] was born in a jail and broke the jail bars to end the life of the evil Kansa,” he said. He too pointed to Mr. Shah’s incarceration.
Modi betraying prejudices against Bihar, says Nitish
Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public meeting in Gaya on Sunday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar held a press conference in Patna, attacking >Mr. Modi for referring to Bihar as a BIMARU State .
Inspite of our repeated pleas Modiji hasn't retracted his derogatory remarks on our DNA, we're going to launch शब्दवापसी /TakeBackYourWords
— Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) >August 10, 2015“By first running down the Bihari DNA and now calling Bihar a BIMARU State and Biharis as unfortunate, he is betraying his prejudices against Bihar and Biharis. The Prime Minister claims nothing has been achieved in Bihar in 25 years, whereas leaders of his party compete to claim credit for the development of the past 10 years. Who is right, Bada [big] Modi or chhota [Sushil] Modi,” he asked.
“The one who talks of Janata Dal(U) standing for Janata ka daman aur utpeedan [oppression and exploitation of the people] should know that the whole country remembers Vajpayeeji’s suggestion to you to follow ‘Raj Dharma’,” Mr. Kumar tweeted referring to the Gujarat riots of 2002, when Mr. Modi was the Chief Minister of that State.
Mr. Kumar has often made comments against the Prime Minister’s tendency to use the social media to engage, but has started using it often.
“Everything that they [the BJP] do is on Twitter, which is why I, too, am using it in order to get some answers to my questions,” the Chief Minister said.
