You can also prefer lighting a lantern: RJD jibe at PM

Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked people to light candles on April 5 at 9 pm for nine minutes, the Opposition parties have been making fun of his appeal “which was devoid of any vision for the future and also lacked any roadmap for revival of the crippled economy”.

The RJD, the main Opposition party in Bihar, took a jibe at the Prime Minister’s third address to the countrymen in recent times in which Modi appealed to the people to light diyas (earthen lamps), mobiles or candles. “You can also prefer lighting a lantern,” tweeted RJD legislator and Lalu Prasad’s elder son, Tej Pratap.

Notably, ‘lantern’ is the election symbol of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Bihar will have Assembly polls in the next few months.

The RJD national vice-president and former Rajya Sabha member, Shivanand Tiwary, was all the more scathing. “Mr Prime Minister, you are adept at playing with words. But your address to the nation on Friday was highly disappointing,” wrote Tiwary in his Facebook post.

“Your address to the countrymen showed that you neither have vision (to fight during this crisis) nor any plan on how to rebound. You failed to provide any roadmap for daily wage labourers and migrants who have been hit hard during the lockdown…. And if you have really no concrete idea for the future, then it would have been appropriate for you not to address the nation,” said the former Rajya Sabha MP in his post (in Hindi) on social media.