File photo of Nitish Kumar
Stung by the report of a BJP-affiliated think tank that said things had gone downhill for Bihar after he ended his party's alliance with the BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the study, calling it a "mountain of deceit" ahead of elections next month.
"The study is a deliberate attempt to deny and hamper the truth of Bihar's development and progress," Mr Kumar said.
Headed by BJP vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, the report by the Public Policy Research Centre had said, "All key development indicators analysed in this study underscore the fact that split of the BJP-JD(U) has impacted highly negatively on the quality of governance and thereby the lives of the people of Bihar."
The BJP and the Janata Dal United had parted ways in 2013 after Narendra Maodi was named the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate for last year's national elections.
Ties between the two parties have been bitter since then and Mr Kumar's party now is part of the alliance to which a BJP-led coalition is seen as the biggest challenger.
Countering assertions by the study that went on to detail attacks used by PM Modi for the last two months to round the Bihar government, Mr Kumar claimed that both on economic growth and fiscal deficit, the state was among the best performing in the country.
During his campaigns, while PM Modi had cited crime data from Bihar to say the state was under 'jungle raj', Mr Kumar claims that Bihar in fact has a lower rate of crime against women than many BJP-ruled states.
But perhaps it is on toilets that Mr Kumar says the study has got it most wrong. Calling the data cited in the report "false and misleading", he said that nearly three-fourths of all schools in Bihar have toilets for both boys and girls.