Chief minister Nitish Kumar has virtually taken the wind out of the hoarding and poster war in the city between his and the Jitan Ram Manjhi-BJP camps.
After taking oath on Sunday, Nitish had ordered the chief secretary and the director-general of police (DGP) to address the matter of removing all controversial hoardings and banners put up by different political parties to mock rivals. Accordingly, the district administration on Monday removed most of the controversial hoardings.
The controversial hoardings, which had been put up by lesser known JDU supporters near Raj Bhavan depicting Manjhi as mythological character Raavan and portraying Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP national president Amit Shah, Sushil Kumar Modi, Mangal Pandey, Brishen Patel, Narendra Singh, Samrat Choudhary, Nitish Mishra, Mahachandra Prasad Singh and Bhim Singh as his 10 heads was not there on Monday. It glorified Nitish, equating him with Lord Ram. Sources said the district administration removed the hoarding on Monday morning.
However, hoardings put up by different political parties at places like Beer Chand Patel Marg were yet to be removed.
District magistrate Abhay Kumar Singh said: "On the directive of chief minister Nitish Kumar, some of the hoardings have been removed and the rest of the controversial hoardings and posters would be removed in a day or two."
At the BJP state office, hoardings questioning Nitish's political credibility were still around. Three separate hoardings, appearing side-by-side, questioned how Nitish changed his political affinity time and again, depending on the situation, his proximity to former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, Lalu Prasad, George Fernandes, the BJP and Manjhi and how he switched loyalties at the opportune moment.
Sources said BJP supporters had put up these posters and hoardings.
However, the identity of the persons or organisations were not known.
A BJP leader, preferring anonymity, said: "There is nothing controversial in the hoarding, as most of the points mentioned in those had been raised by senior BJP leaders time and again when the state was passing through the political turmoil."
Even outside the JDU party office, banners and hoardings attacking the BJP depicted the saffron party as "power hungry" and blamed it for the current political turmoil in the state.
