Zee Media Bureau/Ritesh K Srivastava
Patna/New Delhi: The main opposition party, BJP, on Monday attacked the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar over its failure to avert Sunday`s blast in Patna and said that it was a conspiracy to kill its PM candidate Narendra Modi.
Addressing a press conference in Patna, state`s former Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Sushil Modi said, "I feel Sunday`s serial blasts in Patna were a conspiracy to eliminate Gujarat Chief Minister and our PM candidate Narendra Modi."
Sushil Modi even attacked the Nitish Kumar government for ignoring the threats to Modi`s life and asked, "Why was an anti-sabotage check not conducted."
"One of the low intensity bombs exploded just 100 metres away from the stage where Modi ji and other senior leaders were present. Imagine what would have happened,"Sushil Modi asked.
Earlier, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley blamed the Bihar government and the state police for completely ignoring the intelligence inputs about Modi`s `Hunkar` rally.
Talking to reporters, Jaitley said, "As per our information, Bihar`s Additional DGP was sent two alerts, we want Centre & state govt to confirm this. There was a generic intelligence alert on October 1 and a specific alert was sent to Bihar govt on October 23 and then on October 27."
Coming down heavily on the Nitish Kumar government for ignoring the intelligence alerts, Jaitley said, "Bihar govt can`t wash its hands off the matter by saying there was no intelligence alert about the rally."
Seeking clarification the Centre and the Bihar government, the BJP leader said, "We need to find out whether yesterday`s conspiracy was executed by the same faction (IM)."
"All I can say is that the attitude was casual and callous. There is a security drill in this country, so must let Centre along with state government look into what security lapses were there," Jaitley said.
Attacking the Bihar government for mismanagement, Jaitley said, "Had we not assured people that these were fire crackers, there could be unprecedented consequences due to a stampede there," adding, "If a casualty was further averted, it was purely our good fortune."
Jaitley even questioned Centre`s soft approach to incidents of terrorism by saying, "Are we going to be soft on security because some state governments want to be seen as soft on terror for collateral reasons?"
"We were asked to call off Patna rally when we reached there because four blasts had already happened, " Jaitley commented adding, "When a Chief Minister of a different state goes to another then Advanced Security Drill is conducted which host state has to certify. Bihar did not certify it."
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who has come under the opposition attack for attending a film related event in Mumbai on a day when serial blasts took place in Patna, said that he will visit the Bihar capital tomorrow to review the situation.
