Gaya, Aug. 9: Narendra Modi today promised a turnaround of "sick" Bihar which only he and his BJP were capable of, "unleashing" snake and sandalwood to lacerate his rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad.

" Mujhe to pata hi nahin chalta hai ki Chandan (sandalwood tree) Kumar kaun hai aur Bhujang (snake) Prasad kaun hai (I am unaware of who is sandalwood and who is snake)," the Prime Minister said in his inimitable style, fuelling peels of laughter on the dais as well as in the crowd. He squarely blamed Lalu and Nitish for "ruining" Bihar in 25 years of their rule, asserting that a "dispensation like the one in Delhi (the BJP-led government at the Centre) could only bring Bihar out of the long spell of misfortune".

Launching a strident attack on his rivals in poll-bound Bihar, the Prime Minister lauded the chief ministers of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan - Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje - embroiled in controversies. "Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are no longer Bimaru (ailing) states because of the BJP government," Modi said, calling upon the people to have a government like those in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for a "turnaround" in Bihar.

While lavishing praise on the BJP-ruled states, Modi questioned the durability of the JDU-RJD alliance. "One leader (read Lalu) said he was gulping down poison. Another (read Nitish) claimed he was like a sandalwood who would stay unaffected even if snakes were tied around him," Modi said, predicting that the friendship between the sandalwood and the snake would end after the (Assembly) elections. "Then the leader (Lalu) would vomit his poison in people's plate. Are you ready for such a situation?" he asked the assemblage, which replied " nahin (no)".

Prime Minister Modi re-launched the scathing attack on Nitish and Lalu while addressing the BJP's second Parivartan Rally at Gandhi Maidan here - the historic city of south Bihar which saw Gautam Buddha attaining enlightenment in the sixth century BC. Nearly 75,000 to one lakh people were in attendance but the assemblage woefully lacked the presence of women who were few and far between. Youths, mostly party cadres, outnumbered others.

The BJP selected Gaya, the headquarters of Magadh region and home to former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, for the Prime Minister's rally, eyeing the Dalit votes. Manjhi, now with the NDA, rose to paint Nitish as a leader who "rejoiced" in humiliating the Dalits.

Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP), Upendra Kushwaha (RLSP) besides a battery of BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, Sushil Kumar Modi, Nand Kishore Yadav, Mangal Pandey and Radhamohan Singh, addressed the gathering. But the key speaker was Modi.

At his first Parivartan Rally in Muzaffarpur on July 25, Modi had christened Lalu's RJD as "Rozana Jungle Raj Ka Darr (fear of lawlessness everyday)". In Gaya, he today christened Niish's JDU as "Janata Par Daman, Utpidan (oppression and suppression of public)" party.

Modi strongly questioned Nitish's commitment to seek votes only after improving the power scenario and said: "The per capita power consumption in the state was barely 150MW per head against the 1,000MW of national average. Even small states like Jharkhand, carved out from Bihar, and Sikkim have five and six times better per capita consumption of power."

When Modi asked the crowd if they would vote for the government which has kept them in darkness, there was a muted response. Justifying the reaction of the assemblage, Jagdhari Mahto - a face in the crowd - murmured: " Bijli ki sthiti me to sudhar hua hai (The power scenario has improved), remarked."

Focusing his attack on the jungle raj (lawlessness) that Nitish and Lalu were trying to bring in, Modi reeled off statistics painting the grim scenario of development in Bihar. "Bihar has about 80 lakh unemployed youths. But the state has only 25,000 seats in its engineering colleges against 1.73 lakh in a small state like Odisha, 1.4 lakh in Punjab, 24,000 in a tiny state like Himachal Pradesh having a population less than Patna and 40,000 in Uttarakhand," he said, adding that unfortunate Bihari students were bound to go to other states for studies causing a flight of Rs 4,000 crore per annum from poor Bihar to other states.

Modi also highlighted how Bihar had fallen in the vicious trap of durbhagya (misfortune) because of the 25 years of "misrule" by Lalu and Nitish. "Now, a leader (read Lalu) who learned many bad traits while staying in jail has joined with another (read Nitish) to add to the misfortune through jungle raj," he said, asking people if they would allow jungle raj-2 to set in. A section screamed "nahin", while the other stayed muted.