In Bihar, Madhya Pradesh CM Mohan Yadav takes veiled dig at Nitish, RJD

After being felicitated at the well-attended ceremony, he went to the party office and followed it up with a visit to the local ISKCON temple where senior BJP leaders like state president Samrat Choudhary and leader of the opposition in Bihar assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha accompanied him.

In a veiled dig at former ally Nitish Kumar, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Mohan Yadav on Thursday claimed that Bihar has been let down by its leadership which indulged in ''opportunism''.

Yadav, who was on his first day-long visit to Bihar since assuming power, addressed BJP workers at the party's state headquarters.

''The people of Bihar are known to excel in life - from the coveted civil services to agriculture. Their efforts have played a role in the growth of all parts of the country. But the state finds itself unable to shed the BIMARU tag, unlike other provinces which were similarly labelled.'' The acronym BIMARU has been used in the past few decades to refer to the states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, to denote that they have lagged in various development indicators. BIMARU also means “sickly” in Hindi.

The MP chief minister said, ''It is not the people who are to be blamed, but a leadership known for lack of capability and opportunism.'' The BJP shared power in Bihar with Kumar till less than two years ago when the JD(U) supremo, the longest-serving Chief Minister of Bihar, pulled the plug on the alliance.

Now in the opposition camp, Kumar has emerged as a key player in the INDIA bloc, even as the BJP has accused him of making an opportunistic move to fulfil his Prime Ministerial ambitions, a charge the JD(U) leader vehemently denies.

Both JD(U) and BJP remained engaged in a spat over which party should get the credit for Bihar clocking a higher than the national average growth rate for several consecutive years.

Yadav, who replaced Shivraj Singh Chauhan after the BJP romped home in the assembly elections last year, also spoke of ''dynasty rule in other parties'', construed in political circles here as an indirect reference to the RJD, Nitish Kumar's current ally, which is controlled by the family of its founding president Lalu Prasad.

Incidentally, the BJP hopes that Mohan Yadav's rise to the top post in Madhya Pradesh will help the party make a dent in the RJD's support base, popularly known as ''MY'' (Muslim-Yadav) in the political lexicon.

A caste survey conducted by the Nitish Kumar government last year has estimated that Yadavs comprised nearly 14 per cent of the state’s total population, making them the numerically largest caste.

Initially, the charge of numbers being fudged to politically suit the RJD came from no less a leader than Union Home Minister Amit Shah, though the party has thereafter sought to tone down the attack and win over those in the sizeable community who feel they did not get a square deal from their first party of preference.

Predictably, therefore, BJP leaders from the Yadav caste like Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai and former central minister Ram Kripal Yadav, former state minister Nand Kishor Yadav and MLC Nawal Kishor Yadav were at the party office to receive the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister.

Ram Kripal Yadav, an ex-loyalist of Lalu Prasad who joined BJP in 2014 and has defeated the RJD supremo’s daughter twice in Lok Sabha polls, told reporters: ''Prime Minister Narendra Modi has bestowed a great honour on the Yadav clan by making Mohan Yadav the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. This has created a buzz in Bihar. All segments of the society have so far given their blessings to Modi. They will do so again''.

Mohan Yadav began his tour by attending a function organised by Shri Krishna Chetana Vichar Manch, a non-political body that works for the all-round progress of Yadavs. After being felicitated at the well-attended ceremony, he went to the party office and followed it up with a visit to the local ISKCON temple where senior BJP leaders like state president Samrat Choudhary and leader of the opposition in Bihar assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha accompanied him.