'What better face...?' Akhilesh Yadav on Tejashwi as INDIA bloc CM pick for Bihar

LoP in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav, RJD leaders Tejashwi Yadav and Rohini Acharya Yadav during the 'Voter Adhikar Yatra', in Saran district, Bihar. (Image: AICC via PTI)

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday backed RJD leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar as the chief ministerial candidate for INDIA bloc in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.

When asked if Tejashwi Yadav will be the chief ministerial face for INDIA bloc, Akhilesh Yadav told news agency ANI that Tejashwi has shown his work in the state to say there is no better face than him.

"When he was in the government here, the decisions he took, jobs were given. What better face can there be than this? I assure him that we will help him with all our experience," he said.

On derogatory remarks against PM Modi and his mother in Bihar, Yadav said no one can speak against the Prime Minister or any woman or mother.

"This election is about SIR and by SIR, they wanted to steal votes. Today they are snatching away the right to vote, tomorrow they will snatch away caste certificates, ration cards... This is the way of the Bharatiya Janata Party to divert the issue and bring up another issue. Today there is inflation, unemployment, what answer does the Bharatiya Janata Party have for this?," he said.

Yadav also took a veiled dig at RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who had recently claimed that the people of India have had “the same DNA for 40,000 years”.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, who joined Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' in Bihar on the final day of its third leg, addressed a rally in Ara town.

“We have been saying that our fight for social justice is 5,000 years old. But only recently we got to learn that it dates back to 40,000 years," said Yadav, tongue in cheek.

“So, we must pull up our socks. We speak about 5,000 years of social inequality. But they (BJP-RSS) assert that the existing order is 40,000 years old. In the last year’s Lok Sabha polls, the BJP was beaten in Awadh (UP). It is now time to drive them out from Magadh (Bihar)”, said Yadav.

Bhagwat had made the statement at a function held to celebrate the centenary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) earlier this week, when he also asserted “everyone in Akhand Bharat is a Hindu”.

Yadav also made a mention of “the chariot (rath) having been stopped in Bihar”, an obvious reference to the arrest of BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani in 1990 at Samastipur, that had stopped the Ram Rath Yatra in its tracks but, incidentally, also served as a trigger for fierce rivalry between RJD president and the then chief minister Lalu Prasad and Uttar Pradesh counterpart Mulayam Singh Yadav, the founder of the Samajwadi Party.

The SP supremo, however, backed Prasad’s son and heir apparent to the hilt, saying, “We will cooperate fully with Tejashwi Yadav in the upcoming assembly polls. May he form the next government and take Bihar on the path to progress”.

“Tejashwi has been promising jobs to Bihar’s youth, which would put an end to forced migration. Let him win the assembly polls and it would be the turn of the BJP to migrate from the state," said Yadav.

The SP leader also charged the Narendra Modi government at the Centre with “trying to intimidate us” but “getting scared of (US President Donald) Trump” in the wake of the steep hike in tariffs imposed by the US administration.

“It seems the tariffs have been slapped on the mouths of the BJP as well”, chuckled the SP president, who also claimed “they had promised to double the income of farmers. But, in reality, the farmers of the country have been ruined."

He also alleged that the Election Commission was busy "manipulating (jugaad) elections in favour of the ruling BJP" and vowed that “all workers of our INDIA bloc shall ensure that names of voters do not remain wrongfully deleted from the electoral rolls. During the polls, they would also ensure that people are able to cast their votes without fear or intimidation”.

With inputs from agencies