A day after Narendra Modi reached out to Bihar’s Yadava voters introducing himself as a native of the land of Lord Krishna, RJD chief Lalu Prasad hit out at the Prime Minister, calling him “Kaliya Naag”, a mythical serpent the Hindu God had slain, and asserting “we will crush him”.
“Krishna had slain Kaliya Nag. It has been reborn as Narendra Modi and is biting entire Bihar. We Yaduvanshis (people belonging to the Yadav clan) will crush him again and uproot his party from the state,” Prasad told reporters as he began a day-long fast for the release of caste census figures, accusing the Centre of suppressing it.
Modi, at a BJP rally in Muzaffarpur on Saturday, sought to reach out to the Yadavas, Lalu’s mainstay, by addressing them as “Yadu Bhai” and introduced himself as a native of Lord Krishna’s land.
Lalu, known for his penchant for the dramatic, arrived at the fast venue at Gandhi Maidan on a tonga, horse drawn carriages that are being used by his party for campaigning for the Assembly polls.
Demanding immediate release of the caste census figures, Lalu said the data would reveal the real numbers of Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes, which he claimed had increased three times over the years. The last caste census was conducted in 1931 during the British rule.
The new data will form the basis for increased reservation for the downtrodden and separate outlays for welfare programmes for them, he said.
“There is a constitutional provision for proportionate reservation for SCs and STs according to their population. At present it is being given on the basis of their population as per the caste census of 1931. When the figures of the new caste census come out, we will demand reservation for them on that basis,” Prasad said.
“We know that the new caste census figures are very alarming. The population of SCs and STs has more than tripled since 1931 and the BJP-led central government is trying to suppress it so that it doesn’t have to give the poor their rightful due,” he said.
Attacking Modi over his plans to build smart cities, Lalu said the country wanted smart jobs.
“The majority of people across our nation are landless and jobless. Modi has lost track and has got derailed while talking about development,” he said. Flanked by senior party leaders like state RJD president Ramchandra Purve, legislature party leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, former Union Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, MLC Bhola Yadav, sons Tejaswi and Tej Pratap, Lalu said people needed to know the number of their castemen and their share in population.
JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, who joined him around noon to lend his party’s support to the demand for release of caste census figures, said he specially flew from Delhi as his “courageous brother” (Prasad) has launched a struggle against “bad conditions” prevailing in the country.
BJP takes potshots at Lalu
BJP on Sunday took potshots at RJD chief Lalu Prasad for calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi “Kaliya Naag”, a mythical serpent, and reminded him of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s ‘snake-sandalwood’ tweet. “For last few days, the language of Laluji is like this. He is using words like ‘zehar (poison)’, ‘saanp (snake)’ and ‘Kaliya Naag’. On the one hand is this poison and on the other hand is development. Poison cannot win against development,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said, referring to his party’s development agenda.
Meanwhile, Dismissing surveys which showed that the Nitish-Lalu combine had an edge in poll-bound Bihar, senior BJP leader and Union Minister Ram Shankar Katheria here on Sunday claimed that the two would “split up” once the process of giving tickets started and the same opinion polls would then predict a majority for BJP. “There is no need to give much importance to any opinion poll on Bihar right now. They are making predictions for the Nitish-Lalu combine which is not going to last”, Katheria said.