Congress corners PM Modi with three questions ahead of Bihar visit
Prime minister's visit includes a stop at Karpoorigram, the ancestral village of Karpoori Thakur, where he will pay tribute
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to visit Bihar on Friday, 24 October to campaign for the NDA ahead of the Assembly elections, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has posed three pointed questions to him, invoking the legacy of socialist icon and former Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur.
The prime minister is scheduled to address public meetings in Samastipur and Begusarai in support of NDA candidates. His visit includes a stop at Karpoorigram, the ancestral village of Karpoori Thakur, where he will pay tribute at the Jananayak Karpoori Thakur Smriti Bhawan and garland the late leader’s statue before addressing a rally at Dudhpura Airport Ground.
In a post on X, Ramesh accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological predecessor, the Jan Sangh, of hypocrisy in their attempts to claim Thakur’s legacy.
Ramesh posed three questions to the Prime Minister:
1. Is it not an acknowledged fact that the Jan Sangh – from which the BJP emerged – brought down Karpoori Thakurji’s government in April 1979 when he introduced OBC reservations, and that RSS and Jan Sangh leaders subjected him to vile abuse?
2. Is it not a fact that on 28 April 2024, you yourself called those demanding a caste census “urban Naxals,” and that your government opposed a caste census both in Parliament (20 July 2021) and in the Supreme Court (21 September 2021)?
3. Is it not a fact that you and your government in Bihar did nothing to provide constitutional protection to Bihar’s 65% reservation law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs, and Extremely Backward Classes — a protection that the Congress government had earlier extended to Tamil Nadu’s reservation law in 1994?
Karpoori Thakur, a two-time chief minister, remains a towering figure in Bihar’s political landscape for his pro-poor policies and his “Karpoori Thakur Formula” for social justice through reservations. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, in January 2024 on the eve of his birth centenary.
As his legacy continues to shape Bihar’s politics, parties in the NDA are vying to project themselves as the true inheritors of his “Jan Nayak” mantle in the upcoming assembly polls in Bihar.