War of words

Kicking off his younger son Tejaswi Yadav's election campaign from Raghopur Assembly constituency earlier this week, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) President Lalu Prasad said the coming Assembly polls in Bihar would be a fight between backward castes and forward castes. Prasad's remark triggered a war of words. While senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushil Kumar Modi said the roads that would be built by the future National Democratic Alliance government would be used both by forward and backward castes, Union Minister of State Ramkripal Yadav reminded Prasad that it was not "Bihar of 1990 but Bihar of 2015". Rashtriya Lok Samata Party Chief Upendra Kushwaha said the secular alliance's chief ministerial candidate Nitish Kumar was just a "mask" and that the real force behind it was Lalu Prasad, who was making provocative statements "as part of his survival bid".