(From top) LK Advani, Nitish Kumar, Narendra Modi

Oct. 19: Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani alarmed his ally by publicly praising Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has been kept out of campaigning in Bihar at the behest of Nitish Kumar.

Addressing an election rally in Motihari, 160km north of Patna, Advani strongly defended Modi and the status of minorities in the western state.

“Gujarat has given the best opportunities to minorities. The per capita income of minorities in Gujarat is the highest in the country,” he said, while rebutting the criticism faced by Modi from Congress leaders for his alleged communal mindset.

During the day, Advani addressed election meetings in Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga also. However, he did not mention Modi in either of these two places.

But Advani chose to praise Modi in Motihari, which has a substantial minority population.

Publicly, the Janata Dal (United) sought to underplay the utterances of Advani.

“Advaniji is the MP from Gandhinagar. He praised a person who is the chief minister of the state from where he is elected. We did not expect him to criticise his own chief minister,” said the national spokesperson for the Dal (United), Shivanand Tiwari.

However, a top Dal (United) leader said in private that Advani should have avoided praising Modi now, more so when the Congress has questioned Nitish’s “secular” credentials.

The public praise of Modi, who was chief minister during the 2002 Gujarat riots, has come at a time Nitish has been trying to establish his “secular” credentials.

Led by Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul, the Congress has focused its campaign on Nitish’s alliance with the “communal” BJP — a tag the chief minister has tried to brush aside.

Nitish had succeeded in convincing the BJP leadership to keep Modi, and also Varun Gandhi, out of campaigning in Bihar.

The first phase of Bihar elections, scheduled for Thursday (October 21), covers areas with a considerable Muslim population that Nitish has assiduously tried to woo throughout his five-year tenure.

The cold war between Nitish and Modi started in June this year after a full-page advertisement appeared in the local media showing the two chief ministers holding hands — a picture taken at an NDA rally in Punjab during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

An angry Nitish not only cancelled a dinner planned for BJP leaders at the national executive meeting, but also returned Rs 5 crore sent by the Gujarat government for victims of the Kosi floods. It was because of Nitish’s insistence that Modi was kept out of electioneering in Bihar in the last Lok Sabha polls also.