Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi
NEW DELHI: Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, saying his “dukaan” (shop) will soon shut in Bihar. “Rahul Gandhi’s ‘dukaan’ will be shut in Bihar as the INDIA bloc will be wiped out in the polls. NDA will form the government by securing 160 seats in the 243-member House,” he said. Campaigning across Purnea, Katihar and Supaul, Shah accused Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav of trying to turn Bihar’s Seemanchal region into a “den of infiltrators”. He said the Centre would identify all illegal immigrants, delete their names from voter lists and send them back. “If you don’t want infiltrators to decide Bihar’s next chief minister, then defeat the RJD-Congress alliance that took out a yatra to save them,” he told the crowd, referring to Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter adhikar yatra’. Shah further mocked RJD chief Lalu Prasad and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, saying both were worried about their sons, Tejashwi and Rahul. Hitting back at Tejashwi’s comment that “Modi can’t do what Lalu did in seven births”, Shah replied, “That’s true, Modi can’t run scams like Lalu did.” He also warned that electing RJD would bring back “jungle raj” in Bihar, saying Lalu Prasad had even given a ticket to the son of the late gangster Mohammad Shahabuddin. “If such people come back, terror will rule again,” he said, recalling RJD rule. He ended his speech claiming that Nitish Kumar’s two decades in Bihar and Narendra Modi’s decade at the Centre had been free of corruption.
