Bhagalpur rally: Some questions for PM Modi

Thus far, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had done most of the talking and the asking of questions. Now he will have his plate-full of questions at Bhagalpur where he will address an election rally on Tuesday. He may well have to face his “combined question test” at the silk town which gave him little cheer in the 2014 polls when the party’s lone Muslim Bihar face Syed Shahnawaz Hussain lost by less than 10,000 votes to the RJD candidate.

The most obvious question for Modi is from Nitish Kumar who claimed that the PM’s Rs 1.25 lakh crore package announced at his last election rally, was nothing more than repackaging. The PM had also riled the Bihar CM by quoting high crime figures from the state’s police data. In response, Nitish quoted central government data to tell the PM that Bihar’s national crime average is much better than that of Gujarat, MP and Delhi.

Lalu Prasad has also some questions for the PM during the Grand Alliance rally in Patna on Sunday. These may not elicit an answer as Lalu has accused the BJP of trying to cancel the RJD chief’s bail.

Then, there is Congress president’s question on Modi failing to adopt a clear-cut foreign policy despite his “56 inch” chest. The PM may well have to respond to Sonia’s jibes of engaging in “showbaazi”.

One thing is quite evident: this is a battle of Modi versus the rest. Nitish has succeeded in making development a part of the debate. Lalu has been trying to make it a fight between Modi and him by playing his secular card, dubbing BJP as `Bharat Jalao Party’ in response to Modi’s `Rojana Jungleraj ka Dar” for the RJD.

As for Bhagalpur itself, the BJP has been focussing on its weak areas including Bhagalpur and Banka. The 1989 Bhagalpur riots have been a tricky subject. Nitish tried to score points by tabling the Justice (Retd) NN Singh report on the riots in the recent assembly session. Now let’s see how Modi answers him.