RJD national president Lalu Prasad took a swipe at the BJP and the JD(U) Saturday, a day after they jointly announced a seat-sharing arrangement in the NDA, saying they would first fight together and then against each other.
The former Bihar chief minister made the remarks in a post on his official Twitter handle which is being managed by his office. He is serving sentences in fodder scam cases but is currently ailing and admitted to a hospital.
"They will fight together and then fight each other. They will again fight together and again fight each other," he said taking a dig at the checkered history of the BJP-JD(U) tie-up.
The 17-year-long alliance of the two parties was snapped abruptly in 2013 but they came together again four years later.
Prasad also used epithets like paltimaar (turncoat) and "master in fakery" (swagger) apparently for Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi respectively, neither of whom was mentioned by name.
Kumar was accused of being a turncoat by the RJD after he walked out of the grand alliance less than three years after its formation, following corruption cases against Prasad's younger son and the then deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, and returned to the NDA last year.
Modi was accused of making tall claims and false promises by opposition parties.
On Friday, at a joint press meet in the national capital Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar and BJP chief Amit Shah had said the seat-sharing formula for the NDA in the state would be announced in three to four days.
The announcement put to rest speculations that demands by Kumar for a respectable share may throw a spanner in the way of a pre-poll tie-up.
Seeking to put up a brave front in the face of the formidable challenge that the BJP-JD(U) combine is likely to pose, the RJD supremo said, "Earlier the people defeated them separately. Now they will be beaten together and signed off with an evocative Jai Bihar."
Meanwhile, Prasad's son Tejashwi Yadav told a public meeting that Lalu is an ideology and not just an individual.
Yadav was in Motihari town the district headquarters of East Champaran as part of his statewide Samvidhan Bachao Nyay Yatra.
"Had he capitulated before the BJP like Nitish (Kumar), I would have been the CM of Bihar today. But he is a man of principles and (PM) Narendra Modi realised that he is capable of channelling the public anger against the current regime which would have made his return to power impossible," he said.
"Hence, the ailing septuagenarian has been sent to jail in a case that is decades old and we, his family members, have been framed in new ones," said Yadav, who was named the RJD's chief ministerial candidate for the next assembly polls.
He claimed a recent incident, where a slipper was hurled towards Kumar during a function in Patna, was indicative of the widespread resentment against the JD(U)-BJP rule and urged the people not to waste their energy in this manner but to defeat the alliance politically using their vote.
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