Lalu Prasad's 'jhumla' jibe after PM Narendra Modi's rally: 'Weather warning for Bihar'

Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, the former chief minister hit back and issued a 'weather alert' for 'heavy rain of lies, false promises and illusions' for the poll-bound state.
In a post X, Lalu Prasad shared an AI-generated video with clips of PM Modi, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, and wrote, "Weather warning in the interest of Bihar- Today there is heavy rain of lies, false promises and illusions in Bihar, hailstones of false and tempting promises are also falling along with thunder, be careful."
Earlier in the day, Modi attacked the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief over allegations that he "insulted" BR Ambedkar during his birthday celebrations.
The remarks came in reference to a viral video that surfaced earlier this week, showing Yadav's feet near Ambedkar's portrait.
'The whole country saw what the RJD did to Babasaheb's photo recently.... I know that these people will never apologise because they have no respect for the Dalits and the backwards. RJD and Congress place Babasaheb's photo at their feet while Modi keeps him in his heart,' Modi said.
He further slammed RJD and the Congress for looting Bihar, saying that poverty became the state's "misfortune".
"Those who brought 'jungle raj' to Bihar are looking for an opportunity to repeat their old deeds somehow. You have to be very cautious for the bright future of your children," the prime minister said during a public gathering in Siwan.
PM Modi described RJD and Congress' actions as "anti-Bihar and anti-investment". He said that they just nurtured "poor infrastructure, mafia raj, gunda raj, and corruption".
Further taking a swipe at the opposition, Modi said that the gist of their politics is "parivar ka sath, parivar ka vikas".
"They do not shy away from harming crores of families in Bihar for the benefit of their families. Babasaheb Ambedkar was against such politics," he added.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Business Standard

24 minutes ago

• Business Standard

PM Modi has mastered 'art of slogans', not solutions: Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, said Modi has "no new ideas" and has "surrendered" Press Trust of India New Delhi Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has mastered the "art of slogans" but offers no solutions, and claimed that India's manufacturing was at a record low despite the 'Make in India' initiative. "'Make in India' promised a factory boom. So why is manufacturing at record lows, youth unemployment at record highs, and why have imports from China more than doubled? "Modi ji has mastered the art of slogans, not solutions. Since 2014, manufacturing has fallen to 14 per cent of our economy," he said in a post on X. Gandhi, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, said Modi has "no new ideas" and has "surrendered". "Even the much-hyped PLI scheme is now being quietly rolled back," he alleged. Gandhi said India needs a fundamental shift, one that empowers lakhs of producers through honest reforms and financial support. "We must stop being a market for others. If we don't build here, we'll keep buying from those who do. The clock is ticking," he said. Gandhi met mobile repair technicians at Nehru Place, Delhi and attached a video of the conversation to the post. "In Nehru Place, New Delhi, I met Shivam and Saif - bright, skilled, full of promise - yet denied the opportunity to fulfil it. Noting that there is a difference between 'Made in India' and 'Assembled in India', he said: "The truth is stark: we assemble, we import, but we don't build. China profits." "China is the world's electronic market. There is no other electronic market anywhere. Assembly as many iPhones as you want, all you are doing is giving money to the big oligopolies of India. Start making iPhones, it's a completely different ball game," he said in the video. The former Congress chief said to manufacture parts, whether it is a motherboard or "small pieces", you need a certain level of machining, a certain level of quality, a certain level of understanding of tolerances of working with small components. "That is a learnt skill. That is not something you can get in just two minutes. Until you start respecting the idea of physical labour, the man who is doing that we have no respect for that guy on the street who is sitting there, selling his things, for hours together... "And, at the centre of it, and people don't like it when I say it, and at the centre of it is the idea of caste. We need to make this transparent. We need to show exactly how Indian society distributes power, exactly how Indian society distributes respect," Gandhi observed. Rahul Gandhi and the Congress have raised the issue of conducting a nationwide caste census to ascertain if various castes in society have a proportionate "share" of power. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Business Standard

25 minutes ago

• Business Standard

Rs 20,000 cr spent so far on PM Modi's rallies in Bihar, claims Tejashwi

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday continued with his "pickpocket" jibe, claiming that a staggering Rs 20,000 crore has been spent on rallies addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bihar so far. The BJP also sharpened its counter-attack, with posters being put up across the state capital bearing the slogan "Mera baap chaara chor, mujhe vote do" (my father stole fodder meant for cattle, vote for me), belittling the leader of the opposition who leads the INDIA bloc in the upcoming assembly polls. The young leader, who had a day ago raised the hackles of the ruling NDA by alleging that exorbitant ticket fares of Vande Bharat made Modi look like a "pocketmaar" (pickpocket), used the expression again in a stinging social media post. He alleged that rallies of Modi in Bihar, since 2014, have cost "Rs 100 crore each" and there have been "200 such public meetings" so far. "So the total amount splurged during the period, which has also seen five elections (three Lok Sabha and two Vidhan Sabha), is Rs 20,000 such meetings have been organised by the government even though the objective has been, clearly, electoral," the former Bihar deputy CM claimed. Notably, Modi was in Siwan district on Friday, which was his fifth visit to the state this year, the second in less than a month, and said to be "51st" since taking over as the prime minister. Yadav, who seemed to be in no mood to give up his tirade, alleged, "What should we call a person who cleverly uses public money on his own pretends to be a man of integrity?... Of course, pocketmaar, not madadgaar (a helper of the people)." The BJP, which takes on the RJD in the assembly elections due in just a few months, retaliated with full force. A day after BJP's former state unit president and Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary had sought to berate Yadav by using the famous line from the blockbuster 'Deewaar' - Mera baap chor Hai (my father is a thief) - in an obvious dig at RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's corruption taint, the party engaged in a "poster war". In the posters, which the party has not officially owned, the colourful slogan is inscribed next to a caricature that shows the father-son duo riding a buffalo, an obvious reference to the fodder scam. The conviction in the fodder scam has left Prasad, a former chief minister and an ex-Union minister, disqualified from contesting the elections. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Post

34 minutes ago

• First Post

Canada's Carney seeks to mend ties, but Khalistan issue requires India to be cautious

Unlike other Canadian leaders such as Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre, Prime Minister Mark Carney understands the importance of India as a country whose global influence is growing by the day, but Delhi must not lower its guard on the Khalistan issue read more In this season of geopolitical flare-ups, it seems at least one relationship is back on track. Years after the Justin Trudeau administration played sinister games with India trying to appease its domestic Khalistani vote bank, the India-Canada equation under newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney is now becoming friendlier with each passing day. A good example of this was on display during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Canada last week for the G7 summit. Earlier India had downgraded its diplomatic ties with the country and had even recalled its diplomats after a controversy had broken out during the previous administration when then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had accused Indian agents of the assassination of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. But now on the sidelines of the G7 summit, both PM Modi and Carney have not only agreed to the reinstatement of High Commissioners between India and Canada, but they have also decided to resume the long-stalled trade talks between the two countries. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD While speaking to media on the occasion of the G7 summit, PM Carney was all praises for PM Modi's leadership, calling his meeting with him a 'great honour' in addition to asserting how Modi has become a permanent invitee to the summit since the year 2018 and would also likely make an appearance at the next summit scheduled to be held in France. While the conciliatory notes extended by Carney towards India are a significant break from the past, what is also important to note is that the whole Canadian dispensation seems to be undergoing a shift of position towards India even on the much-controversial Khalistan issue as well. Around the same time that Carney and Modi held a meeting on the sidelines of the summit, an interesting report was released by the country's top intelligence agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). While the report has again made an unsubstantiated assertion over alleged Indian foreign interference in Canada, in a big break from the Trudeau era, the report has also conclusively noted that Khalistanis are indeed using Canadian soil to 'promote, fundraise and plan' violent activities primarily targeting India since the mid-1980s. This has to be the first time that a Canadian agency has made such an open and honest admission of Canada serving as a base for the Khalistani terrorists for almost four decades now. Looking at the changing tunes in Canada, one really wonders if the future of India-Canada ties will be bright now onwards, with the biggest irritant of extending state support to Khalistanis by Canada a thing of the past? Well, the truth is that it will be a constant cost-benefit analysis that will determine Canada's attitude towards India in the long run, no matter how friendly and favourable the Carney government seems at the moment. One may say that unlike the Trudeau government, which was at the mercy of noted Khalistani Jagdeep Singh's New Democratic Party (NDP), this time the Liberal Party government faces no such compulsions. NDP is now a politically spent force and Jagmeet a practical nobody in the Canadian political scene, allowing Carney to dictate terms more freely. This explains why, for the first time, a Canadian intelligence report has so openly indicted the Khalistanis for targeting India using Canada as a base. The last time an attempt towards this was made, the Trudeau administration had made sure to redact those portions. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In addition to the reduced political dependence on the K-factor, Carney, unlike Trudeau, is a pragmatic leader who is choosing to see the big picture when it comes to the India-Canada relationship instead of pandering to the Khalistanis. This signalling was impossible to miss on the eve of the G7 summit when Khalistani groups were threatening to disrupt PM Modi's visit with charged-up protests taking place in Calgary, but Carney refused to budge to the threats and went ahead with his plans to host PM Modi. Carney's logic was simple: his predecessor had thrown an important diplomatic relationship to the wolves due to his political myopia, and G7 was a great opportunity to reset ties with India, a dynamic emerging economy. Maybe this is why Carney's dissociation with Khalistan was early to spot, as not even a single campaign rally of his had allowed the separatists to wield their flag or raise their cause. In comparison, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre had pandered fully to the Sikh separatists. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Unlike other Canadian leaders such as Trudeau and Poilievre, Carney understands the importance of India as a country whose global influence is growing each passing day. In a press query, he noted India's leadership on the world stage and called his meeting with PM Modi a 'foundational' necessary first step towards much-needed repair of bilateral ties. As per him, India is the fifth largest economy in the world and the most populous country, which is also central to the global economic flow by being at the heart of crucial supply chains. Carney's own recognition of India's economic significance was also driven by the diplomatic pressure that his administration faced from the other G7 countries. In an interview with a Canadian network, Vina Nadjibulla from the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada noted that there was a strong push from other countries to invite India to the G7 summit, leaving Canada with little choice. Now that Carney has finally embraced a friendlier approach towards India as a sign of his political maturity, Canada stands to benefit a lot from the relationship. India, after all, is Canada's tenth largest trading partner with an emerging market of 1.4 billion people for its agriculture, hi-tech and educational services offerings. There is also a two-million-strong Indian diaspora in Canada, of which the Khalistanis are just a small fringe. At a time when even big players in the West are looking to court India, Trudeau's alienation of India was a strategic suicide. It seems Carney for now has done a great job in mending the bridges. But will the Khalistan issue disappear from the Canadian political landscape and also become irrelevant in the India-Canada bilateral relationship? STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Well, hardly so because the Western countries, especially their deep states, have carefully nurtured the K-elements as an asset to balance a rising India. Whenever India will not follow their preferred course of diplomatic action, they will not take a moment to deploy the Khalistani separatists. On this matter, even Carney would not be any different from Trudeau. Not to forget that Khalistanis not only remain a strongly funded cause in Canada, but their activities to canvass support domestically are still continuing in the garb of freedom of speech even today. For now, the Canadian leadership seems to have understood the importance of India as a key partner, so we should make the most of it. But India's own efforts to keep the Khalistanis in check in the Western societies, including Canada, must go on without an iota of hesitancy. The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD