Blaming the Lalu-Rabri regime for Bihar’s backwardness, Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate LK Advani patted Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the “remarkable work” done by him to change the State’s image. Advani was addressing an election rally at Araria on Friday.

“The previous regime was responsible for the backwardness of Bihar. But now in just three years of his rule, Nitish Kumar has done a remarkable job and changed the image of the State. Bihar no longer is known for all that it had become synonymous with,” the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate said amid a mammoth and responsive crowd at Araria. Despite the State being in the grip of a searing heat wave, a large number of people had assembled at Araria to hear the senior BJP leader.

The BJP leader has been campaigning in Bihar for a day in every phase so far. After Araria, he also addressed public meetings at Katihar and Purnia — all of them adjacent districts with a sizeable number of Muslim population.

Advani also charged the Manmohan Singh Government with being soft on terror and failing miserably in checking the price rise of essential commodities across the country.

“Yeh Manmohan Singh ki sarkar ek kamjor sarkar hai.. Weak sarkar hai,” Advani said.

He also blamed the UPA Government at the Centre for not being able to check the presence and spread of terrorism in the country and declared that if the NDA Government came to power, it would root out terrorism from the country.

“If voted to power, the NDA Government would not compromise on national interests. We’ll take terrorism head on and stamp out the menace from our soil,” Advani said emphatically. The BJP leader also dubbed terror as the biggest challenge the country was facing today. “The NDA’s commitment to root out terrorism is unequivocal,” the BJP leader declared.

Making an oblique reference to the regime of the Congress, the BJP’s candidate for prime ministership further said that those who came to power after Independence failed to realise the dream of development of the country for which innumerable people had laid down their lives.

In the same vein, Advani said that the nuclear test done by the NDA Government — when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister — had changed the western world’s perception towards India. “The nuclear test saw India’s prestige soar in the eyes of powerful western nations. In just a single moment, the whole world’s perception towards India underwent a radical change. Our position among the world’s powerful nations rose since then,” said Advani.

The senior BJP leader also addressed large public meetings at Katihar and Purnia, where he appealed to voters to give their mandate to the NDA candidates so that “we can make a strong, vibrant India”.

Source: Daily Pioneer