Proponents of ‘jungle raj’ in Bihar do not want the people of the state to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ or ‘Jai Shri Ram’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday as he addressed an election rally in Saharsa, which will vote in third and final phase of the assembly elections on November 7. In the second address of the day, PM Modi urged voters to reject the ‘jungle raj’ or lawlessness brought about by the opposition.
“There is a group of people that doesn’t want you to say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ or ‘Jai Shri Ram.’ All of them have now come together and asking for votes from the people of Bihar. There’s a need to give a befitting answer to such people in during the Bihar elections,” PM Modi said in Saharsa.
Prime Minister Modi also asserted that Bihar will vote the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to power once again, as polling in the second phase of the Bihar assembly elections was underway in the eastern state. The Prime Minister said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA is committed to a government which will work for its development and for the poor in the state as he addressed a public meeting in Saharsa.
“The people of Bihar have decided to form the NDA government,” he said as began the address by urging people to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai and said a few lines in Maithili. “Every citizen of Bihar is well aware of the betrayal by the jungle raj against the capability of Bihar. Those who repeatedly chanted the name of the poor kept the poor away from elections. The poor of Bihar did not have the right to form a government of their own,” he said.
The people of Bihar, the Prime Minister said, are committed to Aatmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) and Aatmanirbhar Bihar. “Over the years, the foundation of Bihar has been laid which has been inspired by a new emerging, self-reliant and glorious past. Now is the time to build a grand and modern Bihar on this strong foundation,” he said. “In the past decade, the NDA government under the leadership of Nitishji has laid a strong foundation for self-reliant Bihar. Basic facilities like electricity, water and roads have reached from village to village in Bihar today. Today, Bihar is one of the states where electricity consumption is the highest,” he added.
The Prime Minister listed the schemes and projects started by his government, including Jan Dhan Yojana and the Mudra Yojana, as he urged people to vote for the NDA. “Due to the Jan Dhan Yojana, hundreds of crores of rupees have been deposited directly into the bank accounts of millions of sisters of Bihar during this crisis in Corona. This is the Jan Dhan Yojana, due to which, even during the Corona period, direct help has reached the bank account of millions of farmer families of Bihar,” he said.
Earlier in the day, PM Modi said the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had spent the last decade meeting the people’s needs and was now focused on taking care of their aspirations. He also dismissed suggestions of anti-incumbency against the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar while addressing a rally in Forbesganj, a north Bihar town in Araria district.
“The last decade was spent in fulfilling avashyaktaaein (needs). The current one shall be devoted to meeting the aakankshaaein (aspirations),” he said. “We succeeded in bringing gas cylinders to every household. Now we shall be graduating to gas pipelines. In the decade that went by, we built roads, now we are building airports and giving a facelift to the existing ones,” he added.
Modi also asserted that trends of the first phase of the Bihar assembly elections and the second that was underway suggested that voters of the state had rejected “double yuvraaj”, an expression he has coined for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD’s) Tejashwi Yadav. “In Bihar, rangbaazi (rowdyism) and rangdaari (extortion) are losing and vikas (development) and kanoon kaa raaj (rule of law) is winning, parivarvad (dynasty rule) is being defeated by jantantra (democracy),” he asserted.
Training his guns at the Congress, Modi accused the opposition party of having always made false promises of poverty eradication, farm loan waiver and one rank-one pension for retired servicemen. “This is the reason why the party is now left with less than 100 MPs in both Houses of Parliament combined. In states like UP and Bihar they have been relegated to the third, fourth or fifth position and are piggybacking other parties for survival,” he added.
The Prime Minister also praised people for the impressive voter turnout in the first phase of elections and the second phase so far despite the coronavirus pandemic. “It is an occasion for the world, all the think tanks across the world, to take note and understand the deep roots of democracy in India”. He also praised the Election Commission and poll officials for conducting the mammoth exercise amid the crisis.
Millions of people are voting in the second phase of Bihar Assembly Election 2020 which is underway in 94 constituencies. In phase 1, held on October 28, 71 constituencies went to vote. The third and final phase of voting will be held November 7 and votes will be counted on November 10.
