GAYA: Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Saturday strongly criticized CM Jitan Ram Manjhi for his special attention to Gaya, particularly Mahkar (his home village), at the cost of other districts. He said the CM should always keep this in mind that he is not the CM of Gaya alone.

The CM in the last three months has visited Gaya about a dozen times and has been proclaiming his partisanship towards the place without realizing that by doing so he was doing great injustice to the other areas of the state.

Adding spice to his allegation, Modi said that whereas people elsewhere looked at Manjhi as the CM of Gaya, in Gaya he came to know that Gayaites saw Manjhi as the CM of Mahkar.

"If an area can be developed only if the CM hailed from the region, then it would be better to rotate the chief minister post among the legislators from different districts and going by the number of districts and the term of the assembly, each district will get a CM for about six weeks, Modi said while talking to newsmen at Gaya Circuit House on Saturday afternoon.

The former deputy CM also criticized the JD (U) for allegedly demeaning the post of the CM as Manjhi has continuously been "ignored" and "humiliated" by his own party leaders, including ministers. Giving a specific example, Modi said that breaking convention, a half page ad of the health department did not carry the CM's photograph nor was the CM invited to the health department's official function where Nitish Kumar called the shots. Modi also wanted to know why Nitish Kumar was shying away from the CM's company at public functions.

Modi further said JD (U), in fact, virtually stood split in two parts ? JD (U) and JD (J) ? where J stands for fractioni led by Manjhi himself. Asked whether BJP was ready to form an alliance with what he called JD (J), Modi skipped the issue by saying that it was a "hypothetical" question.

On the question of August 21 bypolls being viewed as a referendum on the functioning of the Narendra Modi government, the BJP leader said assembly elections are contested on local issues and as such it will not be proper to link the bypolls results with the performance of the Narendra Modi government.

He also reiterated his allegation that crime graph has increased in the state following BJP's exit from the government in the state. "The trust deficit between Manjhi and Nitish is also causing harm to the state," Modi said.

