JD-U blames fuel price hike for Bihar bypoll defeat
Patna, June 1: After the Rashtriya Janata Dal wrested the Jokihat Assembly seat from the ruling JD-U in Bihar, a senior Janata Dal-United leader blamed rising prices of petrol and diesel for the drubbing.
A day after Shahnawaz Alam won the seat by over 41,000 votes, JD-U General Secretary K.C. Tyagi on Friday said: "Rising price of petrol and diesel mainly angered people that led to our defeat in Jokihat and NDA elsewhere" in the bypolls held on May 28.
Tyagi said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre should take measures to control and check the price hike which is "directly impacting rural economy and common man".
He said the BJP "should go for more coordination and meetings with its allies before taking any decision". The JD-U is an ally of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre, besides operating an alliance in the state.
Another BJP ally Lok Janata Party also said that rising prices of petrol and diesel is bad sign and main cause behind growing anger among people.
LJP state president Pasupati Kumar Paras, who is also a minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, said the BJP should take spiralling price hike seriously.
Two months ago that RJD had defeated JD-U in bypolls to Jehanabad assembly seat and the Araria Lok Sabha seat.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
