Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav addresses an election rally in Danapur, Bihar yesterday.

IANS
Chhapra, Bihar

The governments of Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal-United of the past 25 years have turned Bihar’s youths into migrants, forcing them to seek jobs outside the state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday.
Addressing the first of four election rallies at Maraurah in Chhapra district, about 80km from Patna, Modi promised all-round development of Bihar if the Bharatiya Janata Party was voted to power in ongoing assembly elections.
“(Chief Minister) Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav are responsible for forcing people to leave the state. They made migrants of the youths of Bihar,” Modi said at an election rally, referring to the JD-U and RJD leaders.
This was because nothing has been done by successive governments in the past quarter century to generate economic development in Bihar, he said.
The third round of staggered Bihar elections will be held on October 28.
“If the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) comes to power in Bihar, I will look into how to develop Bihar by attracting investors to set up industries,” Modi said.
“We will make Bihar a developed state,” the prime minister added.
He criticised the grand alliance of the JD-U, RJD and Congress, and asked the people to shun them.
Modi said Nitish Kumar and Yadav were to blame for the state’s backwardness.
“In the last 25 years Bihar has got no electricity, no development. It is the only state where electricity has not reached a majority of villages.
“We talk of development in our election rallies but they (Yadav and Nitish Kumar) talk of ‘Modi and Modi’.”
The BJP veteran said the RJD should be known as “Rashtriya Jadu Tona Dal” after the former Bihar chief minister claimed that he was the biggest tantric in the country.
He said the BJP-led four-party alliance wished to provide power, water, infrastructure, education for youth, and health facilities for the elders in Bihar.
Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee urged the people of Bihar to re-elect Nitish Kumar to head the new government.
“Request you all in Bihar to please vote to re-elect Nitish Kumarji as the chief minister for greater need of our country and development in the state,” Banerjee tweeted.
Also yesterday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the BJP was always in favour of reservation.
Jaitley’s comment came days after Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological mentor of the BJP, called for a review of reservation policy following the Patel agitation in Gujarat.
“He (Bhagwat) has clarified himself, that he is favour of reservation... the BJP has always been in favour of reservation,” Jaitley told CNN-IBN channel in Patna.
“The biggest speech against Mandal Commission came from Congress... Rajiv Gandhi’s speech that he made after the Mandal Commission report came will make it clear who was in favour of reservation and who was against it,” he said.