Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar and filmmaker Prakash Jha on their way to an election meeting in Bihar. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Nov. 3: ?Thank you, thank you! You should publish the truth. How does it matter? I try not to do anything wrong.?

These four sentences summed up what Election Commission special adviser K.J. Rao, who has become a household name in Bihar for supervising perhaps the fairest ever polls in the state, thought about the charges the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have rained on him in the past few days.

The Telegraph managed to contact Rao this evening in Delhi. ?I will be coming to Bihar next week. The Election Commission, in all probability, will say something on the matter tomorrow,? he said.

The poll panel official has been called everything ? from being a casteist to a man who nurses a communal bias and has even tried to become extra-constitutional ? by these two parties, while every other political outfit in Bihar has praised his efforts at ensuring a ?dream election?.

The latest charge against Rao, levelled by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, is that he allegedly described a Muslim-dominated locality in Bhagalpur as ?Pakistan?.

Reminded of the allegation, Rao said: ?I never said anything like that. The commission will throw more light on that very soon.?

During the past few weeks, the special adviser has toured Bihar perhaps a lot more than any of the leading political players like Nitish Kumar, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. He has displayed equal ease in taking a ride on helicopters, cars and motorcycles. At times, his trips have been unscheduled, taking the district authorities by surprise.

While the RJD continued its attack on Rao, its main rival, the Janata Dal (United), came to his defence today. ?A PIL was filed against him (Rao) in Patna High Court at the RJD?s behest during the February polls. The petition was dismissed. Laloo Prasad is not used to having neutral officers in the districts. So, they are trying to demoralise Rao, who has changed the nature of elections in Bihar,? party parliamentarian Lalan Singh said.

JD(U) spokesperson Shambhu Srivastava described Rao as a ?neutral, brave and honest? officer. ?We take exception to the targeting of the Election Commission and the demand for Rao?s removal. He has checked bogus voting and booth capturing. The RJD and the Congress have already conceded defeat and, therefore, they are desperate,? he said.

Praise for the poll panel official also came in from the most unexpected quarters, the CPI(ML).

?Only Rao can clarify the position on the remark being attributed to him. That apart, we are satisfied with the quality of elections in the first two rounds. In principle, we do not support the heavy deployment of security personnel but Bihar is a special case. Given the turbulent electoral history of the state, there is no option,? CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said.

The CPI(ML) leader said it was ?remarkable? that the Congress has suddenly woken up to the cause of Bihar.

?The Congress should first look into its own house. They are heading a government one of whose ministers (Jai Prakash Narain Yadav) is absconding. A new history is being created and ministers are turning fugitive. We demand his immediate removal,? Bhattacharya said.