Bakhtiyarpur (Bihar):
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday ridiculed Home Minister Amit Shah’s claim that his alliance with former opponent Lalu Prasad was unsustainable as a mix of “oil and water”.
The JD(U) supreme leader also accused the Narendra Modi government at the Center of stifling the media, while blaming “misgivings” over some news anchors for their boycott announced by the INDIA coalition.
“I pay no attention to these people who are shocked by my efforts to rally the opposition and therefore continue to talk nonsense (und-bund bolta hai),” Kumar told reporters in the town of Bakhtiyarpur, on the outskirts of the capital. .
He was responding to questions about the meeting addressed by Mr Shah, widely regarded as the BJP’s chief strategist, in Jhanjharpur in north Bihar.
Refuting the allegation of maladministration in the state, Mr Kumar said, “He knows nothing about Bihar and the work we have done here. He also knows nothing about the country.”
On the boycott of fourteen news anchors over alleged communal and BJP bias, Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister said: “I have no idea about it. But I have always been for press freedom, which is under attack by those in power at the Centre. I assure you complete freedom to practice your profession once we defeat the current dispensation.”
Nitish Kumar, who had severed ties with the BJP a year ago, added, “The decision (to boycott fourteen anchors) may have been taken due to misgivings (un logon ko laga hoga kuchh idhar udhar ho raha hai)”.
Meanwhile, in Patna, former chief minister Rabri Devi, wife of RJD president Lalu Prasad, was angry at the ‘oil and water’ metaphor used by Mr Shah.
“They are shopkeepers (bania). They seem experienced in counterfeiting. That is why they speak such language,” said Rabri Devi, who succeeded her husband as chief minister and whose younger son Tejashwi Yadav is the deputy CM.
The housewife-turned-politician, whose elder son Tej Pratap Yadav is also a minister in the state cabinet, sought to know why the Modi government was wary of holding elections in Jammu and Kashmir, which was stripped of its statehood and suspended for five years was long split into two areas of the Union. past.
She also alleged that since the formation of the new opposition coalition, the members of the BJP “are ashamed of uttering the word India even though it is the name by which our country is known in other parts of the world”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)