'No Show Better Than Poor Show': Shotgun's Jibe After PM's Patna Visit

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's very public request, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's evasive response minutes later at the Patna University function gave their political rivals an opportunity to fire darts at them for failing to deliver on the central university status for Bihar first university.

Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Yadav said PM Modi and the Chief Minister suggested the demand and the reply were for public display.

"Both of them (Modi as well as Kumar) are making a fool of the people of Bihar. They must have decided beforehand that one will propose and another would dispose it," Rashtriya Janata Dal's Lalu Yadav told reporters at Patna's Jay Prakash Narayan Airport.

A central university status would have made Patna University eligible for funding from the centre's resources and led to a massive major upgrade in its facilities.

Congress leader and former education minister Ashok Choudhary said he was disappointed that PM Modi did not accept the request.

But the sharpest jibe came from the BJP's own; Shatrughan Sinha who had complained about being kept out of the big event at his alma mater because of a difference of opinions with the PM.

"A no show is better than a poor show," the former actor who is an MP from Patna told NDTV, saying his feedback from the university students, its alumni and the public to the "categorical rejection" was a sense of disappointment.

"It would have been better for the university if the crores of rupees spent on PM Modi's trip had been ploughed into the university," he said.

For the Janata Dal United that had dumped Lalu Yadav and resurrected its alliance with the BJP in July, PM Modi's visit was an occasion to demonstrate that Chief Minister Kumar's swapping of old allies - Lalu Yadav and the Congress - had earned Bihar the centre's goodwill that would benefit the state too.

PM Modi did lay the foundation stone for programmes worth 5,000 crores to build roads and water works. But much of it was lost in the din over the central university tag for Patna University.

Janata Dal United leader KC Tyagi, however, suggested that the decision to grant Patna University a central university status wasn't expected to be an on-the-spot decision. "That will be decided later," he said.