Prashant Kishor jabs Nitish, Lalu on caste census; Rahul on Bharat Jodo Yatra
Prashant Kishor began a statewide foot march last year in what was seen as an attempt to develop grassroot connect.
Election strategist Prashant Kishor has trained his guns against the Grand Alliance in Bihar after the Nitish Kumar government began the first phase of caste census in the state. The exercise - which was cleared last year by the state cabinet in June - has been dubbed as "historic" by Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav. Nearly 127 million people in 25 million households across 38 districts are set to be covered as a part of the survey in Bihar, HT had earlier reported, after the central government ruled out such exercise at the national level.
But the move has triggered further criticism from Prashant Kishor against the Mahagathbandhan government. "In the name of socialism, poor people in Bihar have been divided. They are not even indulging into caste politics. Even if that would have been the case, then people of that community would have benefited. Lalu (Yadav) ji is not saying that the best from the Yadav community should progress," Prashant Kishor said at the event. "What they are saying is that only our own should progress."
Targeting Lalu Yadav further, he said: "Even if the Yadav community was in focus, 14 per cent of the state's population would have benefited. This is politics of selfishness." Nitish Kumar had parted ways with the BJP last year to ally with Lalu Yadav's RJD yet again.
Meanwhile, Kishor also took a swipe at the Congress's Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir Bharat Jodo Yatra. "Rahul Gandhi is on a 3,500 km-long march. For me, kilometres do not matter. I have been walking non-stop since October. But I do not want to show it off as evidence of my physical fitness," Kishor was quoted as saying by news agency PTI, adding that "Bade log hain (they are extraordinary people).. compared to them, I am a nobody."
Prashant Kishor has also been holding a statewide Jan-Suraaj foot march since last year after he said that he wanted to work for people of the state. His agency IPAC has been behind the phenomenal poll success of the BJP in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, and Uddhav Thackeray, M K Stalin, Arvind Kejriwal, Amarinder Singh, Jagan Mohan Reddy and K Chandrashekar Rao in state elections.
(With inputs from PTI)
