Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at the Parivartan Rally in Gandhi Maidan, Gaya on Sunday (Press Trust of India)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a blistering attack on the non-BJP coalition led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad at a rally today in Gaya, in Bihar, where assembly polls will be held by October.
"If Jungle Raj Part 2 comes everything will be ruined," he said, pointing out that RJD chief, Lalu Prasad, who had been convicted in the fodder scam, has spent time in jail.
"Does anyone learn good things in jail? In Jungle Raj Part 1, there was no experience of jail. In Jungle Raj Part 2, there is an experience of jail," he added.
Repeating his dig at the RJD, which was a hit at his rally last month in Muzaffarpur to launch the party's election campaign in state, he said RJD meant "Rojana Jungle Raj Ka Darr (daily fear of a jungle dispensation)".
Ridiculing the JD(U), he further said the abbreviation stood for "Janata-ka Daman or Utpiran (subjugation and torture of people).
Stung, Mr Kumar immediately tweeted, saying, "In the context of oppressing and tormenting people, India still remembers Mr Vajpayee's advice to you to fulfil your Rajdharma (the ruler's duty) in 2002 (during the Gujarat riots)."
The leaders of the ruling political dispensation, PM Modi said, had deliberately kept the state backward, not allowing his government to bring in any development.
Giving an analogy, he said, "Ganga-ji flows, but if we take an ulta lota (inverted pot) how can we fill water? We are flowing in development, but the rulers here are not taking anything."
Pointing out that the tourism sector, which can bring in a huge chunk of revenue is neglected, he said he had met many people in his visits abroad who wished to come to make a round of the Buddhist circuit. But no developmental project has taken place in Bodhgaya, he said.
Nor was there any initiative for building a future of the state by making provisions to educate its youth, PM Modi added.
"There are only 25,000 engineering seats for the 80 lakh students in Bihar," he said, pointing out that the BJP-led states like Odisha, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh has made better arrangements.
The BJP takes on the combined might of Mr Prasad's RJD and Mr Kumar's Janata Dal United in what is billed as the most crucial election since last year's Lok Sabha polls. The Congress and its allies have also joined hands with Nitish and Lalu.