Bihar polls: Yogi Adityanath rakes up Ram Mandir, J&K and Pakistan in rallies supporting Nitish Kumar

Ramgarh/Arwal/Karakat: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday forayed into battleground Bihar where he asked people to vote the NDA back to power, drawing upon Prime Minister Narendra Modis mass appeal and the BJP’s ability to walk the talk on Ayodhya, Kashmir and Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. The BJP’s star campaigner blazed through three assembly segments with back-to-back rallies on the first day of his campaign in the poll-bound state, commencing his speeches with roars of Vande Mataram and signing off with chants of Jai Shri Ram. Yogi also made it a point to ask the voters to cast their ballots only for adhikrit (authorised) NDA candidates and help Nitish Kumar return as the chief minister in line with the stance adopted by the BJP in the wake of the revolt by LJP chief Chirag Paswan who has fielded a number of rebels from the saffron party and the JD(U). “I am glad to see that you have defeated corona under the leadership of Nitish Kumar. While leaving Lucknow, I had anticipated crowds of not more than two or three thousand. But here I am amazed to see turnout ten times of that,” said Yogi. The firebrand Hindutva icon said that under Modis leadership the BJPs old promise of abrogation of Article 370 has been achieved in Kashmir and Pakistan made to realise that it can no longer sponsor terrorism on the Indian soil. “Ghar mein ghus ke maarenge (will kill you in your territory),” he asserted, in an obvious reference to the Balakot air strikes. Modi presided over the foundation laying ceremony for the Ram temple and brought to an end misgivings whether this thorny issue that stuck out like a sore thumb for five centuries will ever be addressed squarely, Yogi said. “Under Modi’s rule terrorism has been wiped out and 95 percent of naxals have been dealt with. We will ensure their Ram Naam Satya Hai (elimination) by the time the Ram temples construction is complete,” he said evoking a wild applause. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, whose rallies were held in central Bihar, tormented by clashes between Maoist groups and private militias of landlords till a couple of decades ago, alleged that the electoral tie-up of the RJD-Congress combine with ultra-Left CPI(ML) indicates they want to bring back the old days of frequent “ghastly massacres”. “This is Modi’s India, where even chants of Bharat Tere Tukde Honge (India may you go to pieces) inside the JNU campus will not be tolerated,” said Adityanath referring to students protest in 2016 which left many activists booked for sedition. He also harped on Modi’s welfare measures like the Jan Dhan scheme, the Ujjawala Yojana, the Ayushman Bharat Yojana and housing for the poor. “The Congress and the RJD formerly shared power both at the Centre as well as in the state. They could have done what Modi did after coming to power in 2014. But they did not since unlike BJP, which considers the nation as its family, the Congress cares for only Gandhi family and for RJD the Lalu family is supreme,” he said. With his characteristic acerbity, the seer-politician also made veiled references to RJD supremo Lalu Prasads conviction in fodder scam cases which disqualified him from contesting elections and confined him to Ranchi when Assembly elections were under way in his own state. In one of his speeches, he also made an apparent reference to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s recent interaction via video conference with a Pakistani journalist where the Thiruvananthapuram MP had lamented the raging COVID-19 pandemic in India and lauded the neighbouring country for its better performance in controlling the outbreak. “Does Pakistan deserve to be praised by any leader of this country?” Yogi asked with a rhetorical flourish, without taking any names and evoking a resounding nahin (no) from the crowds.