PATNA: Bihar’s main Opposition party RJD has purchased 2,000 bicycles for use in the three-day “cycle yatra” against the state’s NDA government that RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son Tejashwi Yadav is beginning from Gaya on Saturday.
The campaign, christened ‘NDA Bhagao, Beti Bachaao yatra’ (drive away NDA, save girls), aims at mobilising public support against the Nitish Kumar-led government on the issue of rising crimes against women in Bihar and the government’s failure to get special state status accorded for the state.
Tejashwi Yadav, 29, is the Leader of the Opposition in Bihar Assembly and also the RJD-led grand alliance’s chief ministerial candidate for the Assembly polls due in 2020. With his father convicted in four fodder scam cases and sentenced to imprisonment for 27 years and a half, the yatra is a part of RJD’s plans to establish Tejashwi firmly in the political role occupied by his father for long.
Although the 70-year-old Lalu Prasad Yadav is currently in his Patna home on provisional bail granted on medical grounds, he is debarred from engaging in political activities under the bail conditions. But sources said he is guiding Tejashwi and supervising the logistics of the yatra in which thousands of youth workers of the party would participate.
Tejashwi, who served as deputy chief minister for 20 months till July last year, would visit the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya and then address a public meeting at Gandhi Maidan on Saturday morning before starting the bicycle yatra. His elder brother and former Bihar health minister Tej Pratap Yadav would be beside him during the campaign.
“Leaders and activists of the party who are under the age of 30 have been asked to ride bicycles. Most workers and leaders would come with their own bicycles,” said RJD leader Arun Kumar.
Tejashwi would address a second public meeting at Jehanabad after his bicycle yatra reaches there on Saturday afternoon. He would address another public meeting at Masaurhi on Sunday.
The yatra would reach Patna, 100 km off Gaya, on Sunday and end with another public meeting. Tejashwi would then march to the Governor’s House to submit a memorandum on Bihar’s “poor, worrisome law and order situation” to Governor Satya Pal Malik.
In an open letter he wrote for Bihar’s people on Thursday, Tejashwi asked ordinary citizens to join his fight against rising crime against women and incidents of rape in the state.
The ruling JD(U) and BJP mocked at the cycle yatra, RJD symbolised misrule and has lost all credibility.