The JD(U) has dubbed the 24-hour fast of former chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi near Gandhi Maidan against the police firing in Bagaha and the serial blasts in Bodhgaya a costly affair. The BJP boss, Rajnath Singh, and Arun Jaitley flew in by a chartered plane to break the fast of Modiji with coconut water. The cost of ending his fast must have been over Rs 8 lakh. It was a corporate fast,” said JD(U) spokesperson Sanjay Singh. The BJP leaders expressed ignorance about the cost but pointed out that Sanjay must be aware of the price of hiring planes. “During the February 2005 polls, Sanjay Singh was a confidant of LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan. After the elections, he took 15 MLAs of the party to Delhi on a chartered plane fearing that they might be hijacked by the BJP-JD(U) alliance to form a government,” said a BJP leader.
Cold treatment bugs Dal leaders
Chief minister Nitish Kumar rushed back to Patna after visiting blast-hit Bodhgaya on Sunday to hold a meeting of JD(U) leaders at 1 Aney Marg but quite a few of the leaders coming from far-flung areas were stopped at the gate of the chief minister’s official residence. “We were told by security men that we would be allowed in only if Sanjay Gandhi gave his consent. We do not know Sanjay. We only know Nitish Kumar and after this Nitish will have to ask Sanjay to get votes in our area,” said a JD(U) leader from Gopalganj. The news that elaborate food arrangements were made only enraged the “rejected” JD(U) leaders. Sanjay is considered the Man Friday of Nitish. He and Nitish hail from the same district. Sanjay has been awarded with a seat in the Bihar Legislative Council. The JD(U) leaders are certain that the BJP and the RJD have come to some sort of understanding for the next Lok Sabha polls in 2014. “You just have to check the call records of Lalu Prasad to know that he has been in regular contact with both Sushil Kumar Modi and Narendra Modi,” said a JD(U) MLA. The statement has caused anxiety in the BJP camp and there is speculation that phones of important leaders might be tapped. Phone tapping by Bihar police is in public knowledge. Even the phone of an RJD MLA from Ara was tapped. “I wonder if chief minister Nitish Kumar is resorting to something like Watergate-like scandal,” said a senior BJP leader. When the alliance was going strong, Nitish had raised a hue and cry over central agencies tapping his phone a few years ago. Chief minister Nitish Kumar faced an inconvenient question on the Bodhgaya blasts at his janata durbar - why the state government failed to act on the tip-off of central agencies. Nitish said the director-general of police, Abhayanand, had answered the question in Bodhgaya. He even asked the person asking the question to get the answer from the DGP because he would only have to repeat what he had said in Bodhgaya. The DGP present in the durbar told the person that he had forgotten what he had said in Bodhgaya! “Forgetting the answer to an inconvenient question is always convenient for the ruling party,” said an onlooker.
