RANCHI: A day after an FIR was filed against state BJP president Deepak Prakash in Dumka for repeatedly claiming in all his campaigns that the saffron party “will topple the government” after the bypolls, Prakash on Sunday said he stood by his statement and dared the ruling Mahagathbandhan constituents to arrest him.
Prakash, at an election rally on Friday, had said that the current government would be replaced by a new one in the next couple of months although the ruling coalition of JMM-Congress-RJD has 50 MLAs in the current 79-member assembly. “In the next two months, a new government formed and it will be led by none other than BJP,” he had said.
In the FIR, several sections, including sedition, were slapped against him by Dumka district Congress president Shyamal Kishore Singh.
On Sunday, Prakash said, “I am ready to court arrest and let me inform them (Mahagathbandhan) that I will be in Ranchi till 10am on Monday and tour the city. In the afternoon, I’ll leave for Delhi for a day and return on November 3.”
Invoking nationalism, Prakash said, “If being a BJP worker, who chants Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai, amounts to sedition, then so be it.”
The BJP leader reiterated that the JMM-Congress-RJD government will not last more than a few months. “I will stick to my statement that it (government) is going to fall in the next few months. Just wait and watch. It will fall because of its own MLAs, the majority of whom are disgruntled with the current regime and are unable to find any voice or space for themselves. Except those who are holding ministerial portfolios, all others are unhappy that their concerns about their constituencies are neither being heard by the government nor by any other official. The fall of this government is just a matter of time,” Prakash said.
He also took a dig at the government for “misusing” sedition charges and accused it of adopting dual standards. “On one hand, it favours the release of Stan Swamy, who was recently arrested by NIA for anti-national activities and attempts to plot an assassination on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the other hand, JMM has filed a sedition case against a BJP worker. But we don’t fear going to jail,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, JMM dubbed BJP’s “change of guard” chorus during the campaigning for the upcoming Dumka and Bermo bye-election as a symbol of its helplessness to create confusion among voters.
On Saturday, the tribal party’s general secretary, Supriyo Bhattacharya had said, “Unfortunately, BJP succeeded in toppling the democratically-elected governments elsewhere in the country by exercising its money power, but it won’t succeed here in Jharkhand.”