Congress asks Nitish Kumar to come clean on advertisement with Modi

The Congress today questioned Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's secular credentials following publication of an advertisement in newspapers showing him holding hands with his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi.

"It appears that the advertisement displays the cozy relations between the two leaders with smiles on each other's faces," the new state unit Congress president Chaudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser said here in a statement.

The advertisement showing the two chief ministers raising their hands in unison appeared to mock the minority community, he said referring to the 2002 Godhra riots in Modi's Gujarat, he said.

Slamming the chief minister for threatening legal action against publication of the advertisement as ridiculous, Kaiser said that he had no option to get away on the issue other than to to deny altogether the photograph of him with Modi.

Stating that no amount of explanation would clear his public association with the Gujarat chief minister, Kaiser said that the advertizement has exposed the 'real face' of the senior JD(U) leader in the eyes of the minority community.

The Congress leader also had a dig at the BJP for organising a 'Swabhiman rally' here tomorrow after playing second fiddle in the Nitish Kumar government for four and a half years and asked whether the saffron party has moral right to look for self-respect now.