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Kidnapping emerges as a major poll issue

PATNA, JAN. 30 . Amid mounting attack of the NDA by raking up issues of law and order and backwardness of Bihar, the delay in getting the kidnapped students freed from the clutches of abductors is posing another headache for the ruling RJD in the State before the February Assembly polls.

The successive kidnappings of students in Patna, Bhagalpur, Hajipur and Nalanda during the past fortnight, have bolstered the opposition -- NDA and Lok Janshakti Party of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan while making a determined bid to have a political currency on the issues pertaining to alleged sharp deterioration in law and order and State Government's apathy towards development in Bihar.

While a DPS boy Kislay was kidnapped near his residence on January 19 when he was going to school, subsequent kidnappings of Ravikant and Dipak Kumar from Biharsiharif and Bhagalpur, respectively, sent the police establishment into a tizzy. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, while kicking off his campaign for the NDA in Bihar, had in Bhagalpur on Thursday made an impassioned appeal for the release of Kislay here.

While taking a strong exception to Mr. Vajpayee's appeal, RJD president Lalu Prasad had asked ``where was Vajpayee when innocent children were being butchered and burnt alive during riots in Gujarat?''.

``Kislay is not Vajpayee's son, we too have children and Kislay is one among them,'' the RJD chief had sarcastically remarked. He accused the opposition of playing ``dirty politics'' over the kidnapping cases.

Lalu is also making frantic efforts to gain from the recent report of the U. C. Banerjee committee negating the conspiracy theory of the Sangh Parivar in the Godhra train blaze. He also pleads for renewal of his party's rule for yet another five- year term to rule the State for accelerating the pace of development. Secularism continues to be the key electoral plank for the RJD and the Congress, who are contesting the elections on their own.

The BJP and the JD-U in their separate manifestoes, released here last week, have pledged to end the ``terror raj of the Lalu-Rabri regime within three months of their coming to power by establishing a rule of law.''

PTI

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