PATNA: Former Bihar deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav has chosen the Quit India Day of August 9 to begin his state-wide campaign against CM Nitish Kumar and NDA with a prayer to Mahatma Gandhi at his statue in East Champaran district.
His choice of East Champaran to begin the ‘Vishwasghat Yatra’ (campaign to expose betrayal) was evidently inspired by the spectacular 7-km walk Kumar had undertaken there on April 18 to recreate Mahatma Gandhi’s historic walk there a century ago.
Several senior RJD leaders would participate in Tejaswi’s public rally in East Champaran, said the party’s Bihar chief Ramchandra Purve on Thursday. RJD leaders expect Tejaswi’s campaign would help mobilise people for the party’s proposed rally in Patna on August 27 in which many non-NDA parties such as Congress, Samajwadi Party, BSP, Trinamool Congress and the Left parties, among others.
Significantly, Congress on Thursday turned a cold shoulder to RJD’s invitation to join Tejaswi’s ‘Vishwasghat Yatra’ on August 9. State Congress chief and former education minister Ashok Chaudhary said the party was currently “busy with organisational issues” and would think of it later. In Bihar’s erstwhile grand alliance government, Congress had four ministers.
Senior RJD leader and former finance minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui said, “Tejaswi’s state-wide tour would expose in detail how Nitish Kumar plotted his path to BJP and RSS’s lap. We will tell people how he betrayed the secular principles he had been claiming to have all this time.”
The ruling BJP and JD(U) scoffed at the ‘Vishwasghat Yatra,’ asking Tejaswi to tell Bihar’s people instead of how he and his family together amassed assets worth Rs 1,000 crore.
Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of BJP, said, “This is his yatra to keep his family’s massive benami properties away from the people’s attention. Tejaswi should instead tell people how he himself became the owner of 26 plots of land by the age of 26. He should tell people how his family became the owner of benami assets worth Rs 1,000 crore.”