Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav on Sunday said nobody ever heard National Democratic Alliance (NDA) presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu speak during the campaign, drawing flak from the BJP.
Tejashwi said the Rashtrapati Bhavan did not need a murti (statue).
“People do not need a murti. We are seeing elections to the post of the President of India. Do you understand this? We have heard Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha speaking everywhere…. But we never heard the ruling party’s candidate ever speak,” Tejashwi told reporters on the sidelines of a programme in Sheohar.
“She (Murmu) has not held a single press conference since she became a presidential candidate. I don’t think you might have also heard her voice anywhere,” Tejashwi, who is also the leader of Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, added.
The RJD leader’s comments came just a day before the President’s election, scheduled on July 18. He and his party are supporting Sinha in the polls.
Tejashwi’s comments drew a sharp reaction from the BJP and its allies.
BJP Bihar unit president Sanjay Jaiswal said Tejashwi’s comments on Murmu exposed an “abominable face of politics”.
“Tejashwi is insulting a woman hailing from a Scheduled Tribe, who became educated and rose to become awarded as the best MLA in the Odisha Assembly. Her tenure as Jharkhand governor was such that the JMM came out in support of her candidature. He thinks that being the wife or daughter of any particular leader is the only sign of a scholarly woman,” Jaiswal said.
Several other BJP leaders asserted that Tejashwi should first look at his mother Rabri Devi, who was anointed the chief minister in 1997, after his father Lalu Prasad faced fodder scam charges. Rabri Devi was in power till 2005.
Former Bihar chief minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha Secular (HAMS) leader Jitan Ram Manjhi criticised Tejashwi’s comments.
“The people belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes always seem like a rubber stamp to the RJD leaders who gave a rubber stamp chief minister to Bihar for seven years,” Manjhi said without taking the name of Tejashwi.
