As student politics at Mumbai’s J J Hospital campus, fanned by Shiv Sena factions of Uddhav and Raj Thackeray and then by a remark from BJP’s Pramod Mahajan, quickly acquired overtones of a spat between Maharashtrians and non-Maharashtrians, a worried Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, phoned counterpart Vilasrao Deshmukh to say ‘‘please give protection to our boys.’’ ‘‘Yes, Kumar called me up last night to take care of those students. He said there is some agitation, please give protection to our boys,’’ Deshmukh told The Indian Express from Nagpur. At BJP’s Mumbai headquarters yesterday, Mahajan too had expressed his view against ‘‘dadagiri by Biharis.Africans’’ while referring to non-Maharashtrian students in the city. The statement caused outrage in Bihar where some Mahajan effigies were burnt today. Nitish Kumar, meanwhile, told reporters: ‘‘The Maharashtra CM has assured he will ensure security for people from Bihar. Mumbai, being the economic capital of the country, is built on the efforts of all Indians and people from Bihar have contributed immensely to it. Like the national capital Delhi, the economic capital Mumbai too belongs to all.’’
