Lalu march coincides with Advani yatra

Incidentally, October 11 happens to be the birth anniversary of late Jaya Prakash Narayan, and, therefore, the BJP has decided that Advani’s yatra should be flagged off from Sitab-diara, the birth place of JP. Much to the relief of everyone in the saffron party, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, after much consternation, has agreed to flag off the yatra from Sitab-diara. If Nitish can hog the limelight on JP’s birth anniversary, how can JP’s protégé Lalu be far behind? “The RJD supremo will lead a march to Raj Bhawan against Advani’s yatra. He will even try to stop the yatra if he feels even a whiff of communal tension is building up,” said RJD national general secretary and Rajya Sabha member Ram Kripal Yadav. Incidentally, almost 21 years back, Advani was arrested in Bihar on October 23, 1990, while taking out his rath yatra to Ayodhya during the peak Ram Mandir movement.

Though the BJP leaders have asserted that much water has flown down the Ganga in the last two decades, and that the yatra is meant to weed out corruption, Ram Kripal insisted that Advani’s yatra had always whipped up communal frenzy in the past.

Even the Congress in Bihar is wary of such yatra. “What message would Advani give to the people on the issue of corruption when his former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni has been lodged in Tihar Jail in cash-for-vote scam,” wondered former president of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee Ram Jatan Sinha, while speaking to Deccan Herald here on Thursday.
Besides the Congress, the CPI, CPM, CPI-ML and Paswan’s LJP have also opposed Advani’s yatra and expressed apprehension that it would vitiate atmosphere during the festive time.