Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday claimed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not have the capacity to face him or compete with him alone in the election.

“BJP does not have the capacity to compete with me or face me in the election or reply to the questions I have raised so far. They always contest elections with some support. Why BJP is not contesting the election in Bihar alone? If BJP leaders have guts and strength, they should contest elections alone,” he said.

“They contested the election once in Bihar in 2015 and everyone knows the result. The state president of BJP (Sanjay Jaiswal) became leader with the virtue of RJD. He was in RJD when he was first elected as a public representative,” Tejashwi said after a high-level meeting with the leaders of the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ ahead of the “Pratirodh March” in Patna scheduled on August 7.

“During the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani also, they were in power but things were not like this. However, currently, they are personally attacking and intimidating the opposition leaders. We are not afraid of their power. We will fight against them and die for the country to make our democracy and secular ideology intact. We will fight till the end and we will get support from the public,” he added.

The RJD leader further said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi had imposed demonetisation in the country and misled the people that it will break the back-bone of terrorism. Now, terrorists are being found in Bihar and police are claiming to bust the terror modules. How has it happened? The demonetisation was imposed on the country to force people to deposit their savings in the banks… but people like Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi and others looted the bank and fled the country.”

Slamming the BJP government, he said the party is trying to divert attention from some of the key issues.

“They are not taking the country forward but they want to impose the RSS agenda. They want to destroy the democracy of the country. They are coming to Bihar to challenge democracy. They are diverting the attention from real issues like inflation, price rise of commodities, education, health, loan waiver of farmers, unemployment,” Tejashwi said.

Reacting on the Har Ghar Tiranga programme, Tejashwi said: “The leaders of the BJP did not make Tiranga. The BJP people do not know the definition of Tiranga. On the other hand, we and our ancestors have been holding Tiranga in our hands for many years. We do not need to learn from the BJP.”