RJD supremo Lalu Prasad’s son and Bihar’s former deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, addressed a poll rally on Wednesday at the same venue where Union home minister Rajnath Singh did on Tuesday in Hussainabad, 80km from here, to campaign for Palamau’s grand alliance candidate, RJD’s Ghuran Ram, pitted against BJP’s V.D. Ram.
Speaking to a crowd of 3,000, including a large number of daily wagers who had skipped a day’s wage to hear Lalu ka beta at Karpoori Maidan, Tejashwi, 29, spoke about the vendetta politics of “Modi’s people” to frame his father and family in cases, the divisive nature of the BJP and that it talks about Pakistan as its achche din promises had come to nought.
On the closed Japla cement factory, which is a local poll issue, Tejashwi said, “Many people of many parties have told you in all these years about the re-opening of this factory but see the factory is closed. Nothing has been done for this. But in my father’s tenure as CM, he had ensured it was re-opened.”
On Tuesday, when Union home minister Singh was asked by the crowd about his 2014 pre-poll promise to re-start the cement factory, he wiggled out of the charge by saying the court had ordered the factory’s auction and not the government. Singh had also forgotten that he had come to Hussainabad in 2014. This time, Singh did not make any promises about the Japla cement factory and said, “Ask V.D. Ram (BJP candidate for Palamau) if he wins to remind me about this.”
Tejashwi’s audience, who sat on the ground, clapped and cheered when the young man spoke about his father. “My father is not with me physically. The BJP has falsely implicated him. Now you people are my guardians, you are my family”
He also spoke of the “conspiracy” not to allow people to meet his father at RIMS, the state-run hospital in Ranchi where Lalu, a convict in fodder cases, is being treated for multiple ailments.
“There are 35 cases against us. There is a case against my mother. Seven sisters of mine are facing cases, their husbands too. Our relatives have been slapped with cases. All these have been done by Modi’s people who fear my father as a sher (lion),” he said.
He added, “The BJP has no issue. Its achche din promises are all gone. BJP is a factory of falsehood. As it has no issue it talks about Pakistan. It talks of Hindus and Muslims. Beware of them. The BJP is divisive.”
Though Hussainabad has a fairly good population of Rajputs, Tejashwi lambasted Rajpur leader Giriraj Singh, who left RJD to join the BJP, for his divisive speeches against Muslims. “Ee desh uska baap ka hai kya. Ee desh hum sab ka hai. (Is this country his father’s property? This country belongs to all of us),” Tejashwi said.
