Patna, Aug. 31: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses his Parivartan Rally in Bhagalpur tomorrow, he will have to contend with the challenges of history that have not in the recent past always favoured the BJP in the region.
Modi will also be mindful of the fact that the JDU-RJD-Congress grand alliance launched a scathing attack on him at their joint Swabhiman Rally in Patna on Sunday and also delivered a message on compact: Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad are together.
Bhagalpur, of late, has turned out to be a difficult battleground for the BJP for three broad reasons: It is among the five minorities-dominated seats in the state's eastern region that the BJP lost in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in spite of the Modi wave that was sweeping across Bihar.
The BJP suffered a further blow with the Congress, in alliance with the JDU and RJD, wresting the Bhagalpur Assembly seat from the party in the August 2014 byelection. The Congress's Ajit Sharma bagged the seat, known as an RSS stronghold, which the BJP had been winning since 1990.
Third, Sunday's united show of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad has, to an extent, choked the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah strategy to "divide and surge". The BJP benefited in 2014 from the "divide and surge" policy, which caused the division of backward classes and Muslim votes between the candidates of JDU and RJD working at cross-purposes then.
"For the last one-and-a-half years, Modi was going solo in Bihar. He addressed rallies after rallies prior to the 2014 elections and embarked on the same tactics ahead of the Assembly polls, beginning his first Parivartan rally at Muzaffarpur on July 25 and following it up with three more meetings at Ara, Saharsa and Gaya," said JDU spokesman Sanjay Singh, adding, "He for the first time faces a resounding counter-charge from us."
The grand alliance strategists - particularly from the JDU and RJD - now feel that by putting their act together and testing it at the Swabhiman rally yesterday, Nitish and Lalu have for the first time put up a "genuine bouncy" pitch for Modi. "And they are doing it in their own ways," said an insider.
From now on, revealed the sources, Nitish will engage Modi in talks of facts and figures. For instance, he has made it public on the websites that out of Rs 1.25 lakh crore announced by Modi as a "special package" to Bihar, Rs 1.08 lakh crore is related to old projects which Modi has "repackaged". Nitish quoted NCRB's figures to prove that Bihar was better in law and order than all other BJP-ruled states, including Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
Lalu on the other hand broke into high decibel rhetoric to match Modi. For instance, replying to a BJP leader's threat to "break Nitish's chest" and Modi's description of RJD as "Rojana Jungle Raj ka Dar", Lalu chanted a rhythm and rhetorical couplet, " Jab tabla baaje dhin-dhin, to do upar se tin-tin (When a tabla echoes dhin-dhin, then top it up with tin-tin)."
Loosely translated, its message is clear, "If you slap us once, we will retort by slapping you thrice."
"The urban and elite populace might not understand the subtlety of the slang-laced verse. But its message was very clear to Lalu's social base rooted in the colloquial language. Lalu is still unmatched in use of rural idioms," said Shivanand Tiwari, a veteran socialist leader and former JDU MP.
