Patna, May 17: The RJD, faced with legal threats from JD(U) MLC Sanjay Singh, today said “Alsatian” implied “faithful”.

At the Parivartan Rally on Wednesday, Lalu said Nitish had two Sanjays (referring to MLC Sanjay Singh and former MLC and JD(U) leader Sanjay Jha) and both of them were Alsatians. Yesterday, MLC Singh threatened to file a defamation suit against the RJD chief.

On his Seva Yatra to Darbhanga district, chief minister Nitish Kumar, too, condemned Lalu’s remarks. “During the Parivartan Rally, the kind of language which Lalu used against Sanjay Singh is unparliamentary,” he said.

When The Telegraph asked RJD MP Ram Kripal Yadav about Singh’s threat, he insisted Alsatian meant faithful. “Who said the meaning of Alsatian is dog? Why would Laluji call anyone a dog? The meaning of Alsatian is ‘faithful’. Laluji never called anyone a dog,” he said.

RJD chief spokesperson Vijay Krishna, however, went ahead to give another clarification.

He said Alsatian was the name of place in France. “One should know that there is place in France by the name of Alsatian. How can anybody say that he (Lalu) was referring to ‘dog’? One must understand the reference he was talking about. Alsatian is a place in France where a large amount of liquor is manufactured,”

While the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary lists the meaning of Alsatian as “a large dog, often trained to help the police, to guard buildings or (especially in the US) to help blind people find their way”, Krishna was partly right. Alsatian is not a place in France but a dialect spoken in Alsace, a region in eastern France and an important wine-producing region.

“As far as legal action is concerned, everybody has the right to approach the court. The JD(U) is just trying to play with the facts and we are not going to sit quiet over it,” Krishna added.