Narendra Modi addresses rally in Assam on Saturday
Katihar, Bihar:
In Narendra Modi's election speech in Katihar, there were repeated barbs at the Congress but no mention of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Referring to Robert Vadra, Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law, and the corruption allegations around him, Mr Modi said , "An American paper has presented a new model - of having one lakh rupees and converting that to Rs 300 crore in four years. This is the RSVP model - Rahul, Sonia, Vadra and Priyanka."
Also taking on Rahul Gandhi, Mr Modi said, "Rahul ji goes around the country to look at the poor, for tourism. He wonders what the poor do, how they eat and sleep. Does he have two legs? He has never seen poverty; he was born with a silver spoon."
Mr Modi's attack on the Congress was perhaps a strategy, given that the BJP's three-time MP from Katihar, Nikhil Kumar Chaudhary, is pitted against Tariq Anwar, a candidate of the NCP which is an ally of the Congress.
But Katihar's voter statistics means it won't be easy for the BJP this time around. In the six Assembly constituencies that make up the Lok Sabha constituency, there are a total of 15 lakh voters out of which about 30 per cent are Muslims.
The Muslims, if consolidated along with that of the Yadavs, may help Mr Anwar swing this election in his favour, after a loss in 2009. The Yadavs are traditionally RJD voters, who comprise 10 per cent in Katihar.
In the last elections, the BJP-JD(U) alliance won from here thanks to a combination of the 12 per cent upper caste and 30 per cent Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) votes, apart from Muslim votes.
But this time, both parties have separate candidates and they may end up eating into each other's votes.
And so, Mr Anwar, the only prominent Muslim candidate here, is hoping that the Muslim-Yadav combination in Katihar, coupled with some EBC votes, will sail him through.
On record though, Mr Anwar's talking development. "I want to make Katihar a modern place. There has been no development in the last 15 years," he says.
But whoever wins, there's a lot for him to fix - like improper rural roads, no bridges, shoddy implementation of central schemes and flood control and electricity.