Security tightened ahead of polls in Bihar today
The Centre on Tuesday rushed nearly 3,000 central security personnel to Bihar to prevent any further violence in the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls today.
A day after the Centre urged the top brass of the paramilitary forces to review their preparedness for the polls following a spate of Maoist attacks, BSF director-general M L Kumawat rushed to Jharkhand on Tuesday to review the security situation in the state.
Meanwhile, the rapidly increasing strain between the Congress and its major UPA partner, the RJD, dipped to a new low after two developments in Bihar on Tuesday, just two days before the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls.
While RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, in an unexpected U-turn from the stand he had maintained on the UPA's prime ministerial candidate, said Dr Manmohan Singh was not the final UPA choice for Prime Minister, external affairs minister and senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee said at a campaign rally at Samastipur that Lalu Yadav himself might not even get a berth in the next government at the Centre.
Lalu Yadav on Tuesday night had a telephonic talk with Mukherjee in an attempt to see that the ties between the two do not spin out of control. Mr Mukherjee told PTI in Kolkata that Yadav sought clarification regarding his speech in Samastipur where Mukherjee had doubted whether Yadav will even become a minister after the elections. Mukherjee said he told Yadav that it was up to the RJD to take a decision to be part of the UPA after the polls and be in its government if the ruling coalition retained power. RJD sources in Patna said Yadav asked Mukherjee jokingly whether the Congress had thrown his party out of the UPA going by Mukherjee's aggressive tone at the Samastipur rally. PTI quoted sources as saying that Mukherjee told Yadav nobody was thinking of throwing him out of the UPA. Yadav remains in the UPA and there is no move to send him out of the alliance, the sources added.
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