Jitan Ram Manjhi slams BJP for beef issue

Manjhi too blamed Bhagwat and BJP president Amit Shah for the debacle of the alliance in Bihar.

A five time Lok Sabha MP from Bihar with socialist background, Yadav said Bhagwat’s suggestion for a review of reservation was “ill-timed” and “agitated” backward castes and Dalits.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS) ideologue Rakesh Sinha on Monday said that Mohan Bhagwat’s reservation remark hadn’t hampered BJP’s chances in Bihar Assembly polls as advocated by different leaders in the state. “So, it is clear that the people of Bihar settled us”, he said. “The statement only helped the Grand Alliance”.

“The party ought to analyse why backward castes voted solidly for the grand alliance”. It was apparently leaked to make sure the BJP loses and in turn it serves as a lesson to prime minister Narendra Modi that RSS can make or break the ruling party. He also underlined that “not everybody who voted for the Modi government agrees with the views of RSS or is its supporter”.

“We had come forward with many issues”.

“We did clarify it later but people did not believe our clarification and the beneficiaries of reservation including OBCs and EBCs deserted us”, Manjhi said. However, HAM sources said Mr Sushil Kumar Modi’s sudden meeting with Mr Manjhi was a fallout of his long telephonic conversation with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav. In the assembly polls, NDA got 34.1 per cent and the mahagathbandhan 41.9, he said, noting that the vote difference between the two rival alliances remained more or less the same.