JOIN USBihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday sprang a surprise when he undertook a train journey to his ancestral village in Bakhtiyarpur to cast vote.
This was arguably the first occasion when a chief minister of the state had boarded a train to exercise his franchise. In 2004, when Nitish was railway minister, he had acted in a similar fashion. “I always go to Bakhtiyarpur to cast my vote as the polling booth is near the railway station,” said the JD (U) strongman.
Rebuffing the overtures made by Congress heir apparent Rahul Gandhi, Nitish reiterated he would not ever join hands with the UPA. “I am very much in the NDA and have been working tirelessly to make Advani the next prime minister. Beyond this, everything is mere gossip,” he said. But he made a clean breast of his antipathy towards Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Making his intention loud and clear that he was not in favour of projecting Modi as the future prime ministerial candidate of the NDA, Nitish said: “Let us not discuss an issue (Modi) which is at present irrelevant.”
Flanked by security personnel and a battery of media persons, Nitish, after boarding the train, lashed out at his successor in Rail Bhavan. “Lalu Prasad, the self-styled management guru, is the worst railway minister in Indian history. But this will be known to the public once he demits office... The one who succeeds him will have to really toil hard to put things back on track,” averred Nitish. He also drew a parallel to buttress his point: “When he (Lalu Prasad) was Bihar chief minister, people were kidnapped in the state. Now that he is lording over the Railway Ministry, trains are being hijacked,” he said, in an oblique reference to a recent incident in Tamil Nadu.