BJP uses Lalganj firing to boost workers’ morale

PATNA: The November 18 police firing at Lalganj in Vaishali district has given the BJP-led NDA an opportunity to register its comeback trail after its benumbing debacle in the recently concluded assembly elections. A 16-year-old boy Rakesh had succumbed to the bullet injuries he had received in the police firing.
Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan and former Bihar deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi on Saturday visited Lalganj and met the families of the victims of police firing and other related incidents.
Paswan, on return from Lalganj, demanded judicial probe into the police firing, apart from payment of Rs25 lakh ex gratia to the next of kin of the deceased, job for one of his kin, and administrative action against the guilty policemen.
Modi said Rakesh had been hit in his chest. If the police and administration had acted tactfully a day before driver Rizwan rammed his vehicle into a house killing two persons, the situation at Lalganj would not have spiralled into protests by an irate mob that resulted in police firing, he added.
On the day, when CM Nitish Kumar held interactive meeting with DMs and SPs of the districts concerned and asked them not to be lax on the law and order front in the state, Modi appealed to the CM to issue necessary directives to the administration and police personnel not to open fire to control any mob.
At Lalganj, police neither used teargas shells nor resorted to lathicharge or firing in the air or at the lower limbs of those in the mob, but opened indiscriminate fire at the mob itself, Modi alleged, pointing out that tension had been brewing up at Lalganj from the first day of ‘Chhath’ festival. If the administration and police had immediately tackled it imaginatively the same day, the situation would not have worsened, he said.
That apart, the state BJP reviewed reasons behind the poll debacle in Bihar. BJP office-bearers presented their own views at a meeting held at the party’s state headquarters, said state BJP spokesman Prem Ranjan Patel, adding that everyone stressed the need to quickly overcome the sense of despondency that had crept in among the party’s rank and file.
Accordingly, a meeting of the party district presidents would also be held at the state headquarters on Sunday. It was decided to take up the cause of farmers during paddy and wheat procurement in the countryside, while a meeting of all the candidates of the party, including the winners and losers, would also be held to assess and know the reasons behind the victory and defeat of the BJP candidates who were in the fray.