From the cow, the war of words in Bihar has moved to pulses. With Assembly elections underway in the state, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his ally and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad have picked up the issue of spiralling prices, particularly of pulses, to attack the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre, headed by Narendra Modi.
At an election meeting in Patna, Kumar said the Prime Minister's comment "Na khaunga na khane doonga (neither will I eat, nor let others eat)" has become the butt of jokes, with the price of pulses touching Rs 200 a kg. Prasad claimed that pulses had vanished from the "plates of the poor".
Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan came to the BJP's rescue. Singh charged Kumar's government of not utilising the special central fund for price stabilisation, while Paswan accused Kumar of allowing prices to spiral out of control to sully the image of the Modi-led government.
