Modi is fighting for Bihar's future: Akbar

Kolkata, Oct 28: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah are fighting for a better future for Bihar, party national spokesperson M J Akbar said today as he dubbed the coming together of Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar as an "alliance of failed promises".

"If you want to gauge the prospects of BJP in Bihar polls you just need to surf through television channels. You will see massive crowds at each and every rally of Narendra Modi.

These people are travelling for six-eight hours, not to vote for somebody else. "The prime minister and party president Amit Shah are fighting the first election for the next 25 years of Bihar - for the future of Bihar, for the prosperity of Bihar, as against the fatigue and failure to keep promises by Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav," Akbar told PTI.

Akbar said policies pursued by the Modi government at the Centre such as Jan Dhan Yojna and Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana will be a huge hit among the people of Bihar as it will help in the overall development of the state.

"The alliance of Nitish and Lalu is an alliance of the past. It is an alliance of failed promises of last few decades," he said. Referring to writers returning their awards complaining against intolerance, he said they are doing so ahead of the Bihar polls and are politically motivated.

"I don't want to get into names. But some of the writers have got their awards just years after the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, some after several minorities were massacred in Assam. So where were the humanitarian values and moral values then?

"In most cases they (writers) have been very selective in their alleged anguish which leads one to suspect that they have political motive behind returning their award. It is nothing to do with humanitarian values," Akbar said.

Asked to comment on the attack on minorities in various parts of the country and BJP being accused of indulging in intolerance, Akbar said, "Law and order is in the hands of the state government. All the incidents that are happening in Congress-ruled Karnataka or Samajwadi Party-ruled Uttar Pradesh.

Why is there no protest against the collapse of law and order situation in the states?" "The PM has time and again said that it is for the Hindus to decide whether they want to fight poverty or Muslims and the Muslims have to decide whether they have to fight poverty or Hindus.

Can any prime minister be clearer than this that he wants peace between all and development for all," he added.

PTI