The BJP leaders are not shy of talking caste and are giving it a whole new spin. They have acquired a certain aggressiveness on the issue in their public meetings.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, in his own wisdom, might think that it is a great move to turn the Bihar elections into a battle over Mandal Part II. The backward versus forward issue always remains emotive and it is the sure way to victory for the Mahagathbandhan or the grand coalition that he is a part of. But in the process, Lalu underestimated his rival BJP’s capacity to respond.

The BJP leaders are not shy of talking caste and are giving it a whole new spin. They have acquired a certain aggressiveness on the issue in their public meetings. This comes after party chief Amit Shah held a prolonged “review” meeting with his party leaders on Tuesday in Patna to re calibrate their poll strategy. Shah is now stationed in Bihar and tracks the campaign.

“Laluji when you were young (early 1990s), you were the Mandal messiah and we were the kamandal messiah, but today we have both Mandal and Kamandal)”, said the BJP’s most prominent face in Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi in a public rally at Dinara in Rohtas district. For the BJP, Narendra Modi is the living embodiment of all three things – development, Hindutva and caste. Sushil Modi too, like the prime minister, comes from the OBC community.

The central theme of the BJP’s counter attack is the claim that the party continues to be the champion of Hindutva but it is also the biggest protagonists of the social and political empowerment of OBCs. The BJP leaders’ arguments would revolve round four points –

- To lure the younger Yadav lot by pushing hard an aspirational agenda even if it requires explicitly naming their caste

- To make a distinction between Yadav and non-Yadav OBCs, the EBCs and to convince them that the BJP would be their savior.

- To flaunt Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s poor chaiwala, OBC and hardworking mother’s son credentials with renewed vigour

- To clarify, without naming RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, that the BJP and the Modi government has no intentions to review present reservation policy.

Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said: “What does a Yadav mean? Are Lalu Yadav and his family members Rabri, Tejashwi and Tejpratap the sole torch-bearers of the community? Are the likes of Bhupendra Yadav, Nand Kishore Yadav, Hukumdeo Narain Yadav, Ram Kripal Yadav not Yadavs? Are lakhs of others born in the community not Yadavs? Why is it that all benefits have been monopolized and reserved only for Lalu Yadav’s family?”

Sushil Modi takes it further. “Why did Lalu close all schools and convert them into Charwaha Vidyalaya? Why does Lalu keep on asserting that a young Yadav boy must ride on a buffalo? Should that boy not dream of riding a motorcycle or a car and believe that the sky is his limit?” Of the 160 seats the BJP is contesting, 22 have gone to Yadavs.

The BJP is playing on the perceived rift, which is often real in rural areas of Bihar, between the Yadav and non-Yadav OBC groups, which broadly fall in the EBC category. Recalling Lalu’s penchant for the lathi, Sushil Modi in another public rally at Karakat said the RJD’s philosophy was “lathi ko tel pilawan aur ati-pichda ko bhagawan (daily nourishing of the stick with oil to chase away extremely backward castes). The BJP leader would then list a whole lot of EBC castes which for some reason or the other could feel threatened by the Yadav dominance.

In same rally, Radha Mohan Singh went on talking how Lalu Yadav was opposed to EBC reservation when it was introduced by the then BJP-JD(U) government.

The party’s biggest OBC card is, of course, Narendra Modi. Singh said that Nitish would earlier say that the prime minister should come from poor and Pichda background, but that since Modi became PM, Nitish has changed his tune. There was a longish narration of Modi’s social credentials. He referred to legendary extremely backward leader Karpoori Thakur and how Lalu and Nitish worked to finish off the socialist leader’s legacy. Karpoori was once an icon for Nitish and Lalu.

Amit Shah addressed the other charge against the BJP from Lalu and Nitish as a clarification. However. it was essentially is a rebuttal to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement. Addressing a party workers’ convention in Begusarai, Shah for the second time in last 10 days clarified that the Modi government had no plans to change the current reservation policy for OBC, SC and ST and Lalu and Nitish were carrying out a false propaganda on this.