Is this BJP’s patriotism? No NDA leader at Patna airport to receive CRPF soldier’s body

Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks incessantly about patriotism, but when it comes to walking the talk, his party and his NDA colleagues fall behind. The body of CRPF inspector Pintu Kumar Singh, who was killed in an anti-terrorist operation in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara on Friday, arrived at Patna airport on Sunday and there was neither any BJP leader nor a JD(U) leader to receive it.

According to a report on NDTV, all the NDA leaders were busy with PM Modi’s ‘Sankalp rally’ in Patna as the Prime Minister and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar were set to kick off the Bihar election campaign.

"It's very unfortunate that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar did not bother to come to pay his last respects," said Sanjay Singh, uncle of the CRPF inspector who was from Dhanchakki village in Begusarai, 130 km from Patna, said the report.

Top officers of the Central Reserve Police Force, state Congress chief Madan Mohan Jha, District magistrate Kumar Ravi, senior police officer Garima Mallick, and Lok Janshakti Party parliamentarian Choudhary Mahboob Ali Kaiser were among those who came to to receive the soldier’s body at the airport.

On February 16, Nitish Kumar, his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had come to the airport to pay their tributes to two CRPF soldiers from Bihar who were killed in the Pulwama suicide bombing. But, now that the fervour around the bombing has died down, no senior politician of the government turned up, despite several senior union ministers being in the state capital for the "Sankalp" rally.

Four security personnel, including an officer, were killed in an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district on Friday. Sources say a terrorist, who was presumed dead, emerged from the rubble of a destroyed house and started firing which took the security personnel by surprise.

Officials sources say an Inspector of the Central Reserve Police Force or CRPF, a jawan and two policemen of the J&K Police died after firing resumed during an anti-terrorism operation in Kralgund village of Langate area of the district.

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar will share a stage with PM Modi after a decade at the "Sankalp" rally. It is also the first joint rally by the NDA in Bihar since November 2005.