Supporters of two BJP MPs clash at Patna airport

Supporters of two BJP MPs - Ravi Shankar Prasad and RK Sinha - clashed with each other at Patna’s Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport on Tuesday. Both Prasad and Sinha are Rajya Sabha members and had flown down to Patna from New Delhi.

Prasad, who is a four-term Rajya Sabha member and also Union Minister for Law and IT, has been given Lok Sabha poll ticket from Patna Sahib constituency as a BJP candidate. He will be pitted against the incumbent BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha. RK Sinha, an old RSS hand and Rajya Sabha member, was also a strong claimant for the BJP ticket from Patna Sahib and had even started poll preparedness in anticipation of his ticket.

“The whole fracas at Patna airport started when angry supporters of RK Sinha showed black flags to Prasad,” an airport source told Deccan Herald. The supporters of Union Minister initially tried to stop the agitators from showing dissent. But when they continued with their protest, Prasad’s men reportedly roughed them up. In return, Sinha’s supporters too thrashed some of Prasad’s workers.

In the melee, the airport campus became a battlefield with both sides indulging in fisticuffs. Cops were rushed in to restore normalcy.

Incidentally, both Prasad and Sinha belong to the upper caste Kayastha community and had, therefore, sought parliamentary poll ticket from Kayastha-dominated Patna Sahib constituency. Interestingly, the present BJP MP, Shatrughan Sinha, who is all set to join Congress and contest from this seat as Mahagatbandhan candidate, is also a Kayastha and had won from here in 2009 as well as 2014.