General
Amid the ongoing discussions over Rahul Gandhi’s absence from the Bihar election campaigns, BJP’s IT head Amit Malviya took a jibe at the Congress leader’s ‘Colombia vacation’ and ‘video blogs’.
It has been nearly two months since the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha (LoP) visited Bihar. He was last present in Patna on September 1 when he addressed the concluding rally of his ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ amid the row over special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in the state.
Malviya on Wednesday posted a ‘missing’ Rahul Gandhi graphic poster on his X handle and said, “It’s been nearly two months since Rahul Gandhi came to Bihar. Between vacationing in Colombia and making video blogs, he neither found time to care about Bihar nor to manage the alliance.”
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The BJP leader said that Gandhi’s absence from the state has resulted in the Congress being “on the margins in the grand alliance”.
“The people of Bihar know that voting for Congress-RJD means voting for those who don’t work for Bihar, but instead loot it at the first opportunity. Remember, the Lalu family has always filled their own home, while Bihar remained poor and neglected,” Malviya added.
With just a week left for the Bihar assembly election, the INDIA bloc, comprising Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Communist Marxist Party (CPI), CPI(Marxist), CPI(Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, and the Vikassheel Insaan Party, has not announced a concrete seat-sharing deal.
All the parties went ahead and released their candidates’ list for the Bihar polls, without any official seat-sharing formula in place. In the 243-seat Bihar assembly, the RJD is contesting 143 seats and the Congress is fighting 61 seats.
General Rahul’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar
The ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar was launched by Congress in protest of the INDIA bloc’s accusation against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which they said was trying to disenfranchise voters in Bihar through the SIR of electoral rolls. The ‘vote chori’ (vote theft) allegations in Karnataka were also among the key reasons.
The Yatra, which started in Sasaram, covered around 20 districts before concluding in a rally at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan on September 1.
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The NDA leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, have already hit the campaign ground in Bihar. INDIA bloc or the Mahagathbandhan’s chief ministerial candidate and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Jan Suraaj Party’s Prashant Kishor, have all been campaigning for the state polls.
However, Rahul Gandhi‘s absence has become a major talking point even within the party’s ranks, as many leaders alleged discrepancies in ticket distribution.
While the Congress leader has not been physically present in Bihar, he has made some remarks about the state.
Just on Sunday, Gandhi had slammed the NDA government, saying that the trains to Bihar are “packed” and tickets are impossible to get, with the journey becoming “inhuman” during the festive season, as he asserted that “helpless travellers” are living proof of the “NDA’s deceitful policies and intentions”.
On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi posted on X that he had a “very interesting conversation” with the youth of Bihar a few days ago. After his discussion with them on education, health, employment, and “every issue”, Gandhi said, “there is only one culprit responsible for the dire state of all these: the BJP-JDU government”.
General Rahul-Tejashwi joint rallies today?
Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav are expected to hold joint rallies in Bihar on Wednesday, to address rumours of rift within the opposition ‘Mahagathbandhan’, HT reported earlier.
The rallies will reportedly be held in the Sakra assembly constituency in Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga, both of which are key segments in the first phase of polling on November 6, covering 121 seats.
Earlier, Congress sources in Bihar had told LiveMint that Gandhi might address a rally in Khagaria on November 2.
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