Modi takes swipe at Cong & its leaders

PATNA: The Kosi belt has sprung yet another discomfiture for the Bihar NDA. Seemingly, the state BJP is sulking that the Kosi basin's strongman politician Anand Mohan Singh, currently serving a life term in the Saharsa jail that lies in the border tracts close to Nepal, spurned the wooing bid by CM Nitish Kumar to bring him to the JD(U) (or the NDA fold).
For, on Sunday, deputy CM and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi assailed both Anand Mohan and Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav.The latter is yet another strongman politician from the Kosi belt. Currently, he is lodged in the Beur jail after his arrest at Gurgaon following the Supreme Court's injunction.
Modi's barb, however, was targeted at the Congress and its general secretary Rahul Gandhi since Anand Mohan's wife Lovely Anand and Yadav's wife Ranjit Ranjan were present on the dais when Rahul addressed a public meeting at Saharsa on Saturday. Incidentally, both Lovely and Ranjit are in the Congress and enjoy the status of being former MPs.
Modi, who was addressing a function held to commemorate his party's departed leader Ramdeo Mahto, first drew the attention of the BJP audience to a newspaper photograph that showed Rahul sharing the stage with both Lovely and Ranjit. It evoked instant chuckles from the audience. "Congress party once had leaders like Shri Krishna Sinha, Vinoda Nand Jha, Rajendra Prasad, et al. Today, it has people like Sadhu Yadav, Pappu Yadav and Anand Mohan Singh," Modi said to the audience that suddenly turned quiet.
"It is the mark of decline of the Congress that it has to take help of criminal elements," Modi said. In the same vein, he said that for five of the 15-year-rule of Lalu-Rabri, the Congress was in the government with the RJD. "It also has to take the blame for the jungle raj' that prevailed in Bihar during the period," he added.
Modi's barb against the Congress was understandable. For, in the murky politics that became more confusing after the BJP-JD(U) spat over the photograph showing Gujarat CM Narendra Modi holding hands with CM Nitish (the photograph was an insertion in an advertisement brought out in the second week of June), CM Nitish had airdashed to Anand Mohan's village home at Pachgachhia and met his mother and other relatives, obviously to woo him to the JD(U) fold.
Curiously, a week before, the third strongman from the India-Nepal border tracts on the side of Bihar, Taslimuddin had joined the JD(U) in the presence of Nitish. At one time, the BJP had cried foul when Taslimuddin was made the junior home minister, and had called him "daagi (tainted)". In the new situation, the party said that it was "shuddhikaran (purification)" of Taslimuddin. In between, the RJD principal general secretary and Rajya Sabha member had three-hour talks with Anand Mohan at the Saharsa jail.
Yet, suspense prevailed as to which political outfit Anand Mohan was favourably inclined to. Things cleared at the Saharsa meeting that Rahul addressed on Saturday something that the Bihar NDA had least expected.