Samastipur (Bihar): Hitting the campaign trail yesterday for the forthcoming state assembly polls, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not fulfilling any of the promises made during the general election and appealed to voters to rely on a "tried and tested person."
Kumar started his poll campaign from Kalyanpur in Samastipur district seeking vote for JD(U) candidate Maheshwar Hazari.
With district chiefs of JD(U), RJD and Congress on the dias with him, Kumar highlighted unity among the grand secular alliance partners in seat sharing and candidate selection.
"But on the other hand, the BJP-led NDA is still battling problems among partners in selection of seat as well as candidates," Kumar told an election rally.
Kumar, who has been declared the CM candidate of the 'grand secular' alliance, appealed to the people "to rely on a tried and tested person (himself)."
"Rely on tried and tested person instead of looking left and right (BJP) who will cheat again like it happened during Parliamentary poll," he said.
Launching a blistering attack against Modi, the face of NDA coalition in Bihar, for "forgetting poll promises", including that of providing Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh to everybody from black money and enhanced MSP to farmers.
He referred to the Centre denying special category status to Bihar despite Modi's promise of "a special status, special package and special attention to Bihar."
Speaking about the Rs 1.25 lakh crore special package announced by the Prime Minister, Kumar noted, "I had made it clear to the people that out of this Rs 1.08 lakh crore is packaging of old schemes."
Pointing to the recent statement of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat questioning special package for Bihar, Kumar mocked, "Whatever little amount of over Rs 10,000 crore was expected out of the PM's special package has also vanished with the statement of RSS chief."
BJP, Kumar said, would try to cash in on PM's speeches in foreign land and excitement of people abroad about Bihar poll.
"But what will we do with PM's speech in America. He has to answer what promises he had made to Bihar during Parliamentary poll and whether those have been fulfilled or not," he said.
Kumar listed achievements of his government in the past eight years in road, power and other sectors and also talked about his vision document of Rs 2.7 lakh crore for the next five years.
Seeking to allay fear of return of 'jungle raj' as propagated by BJP, the Bihar Chief Minister said, "Rule of law is entrenched in Bihar now and BJP is using fear of jungle raj for political gains."
