Patna,(BiharTimes): All the top Bihar BJP leaders attended the Goswami Mahasamellan in Patna on Saturday, just a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to people of Bihar to rise above caste affiliations.

The prime minister spoke at a function organised to mark the golden jubilee of two iconic works by poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, who was originally from Bihar.Former deputy CM, Sushil Kumar Modi, leader of opposition in the state Assembly, Nand Kishore Yadav, and State party chief Mangal Pandey, were among those who attended the caste meeting.

Mangal Pandey even promised that if the BJP comes to power in the state it would include the Goswamis in the Extremely Backward Castes.Sushil Modi claimed that each Goswami vote would go to the BJP as they have been associated with it since the days of Jan Sangh, though efforts were made by other parties to woo them.

Ironically, BJP national spokesman Sudhanshu Trivedi, who attended the meeting, made a special mention of the PM’s remarks made a day earlier and clarified that the party did not believe in ‘casteism’, and its leaders participate in the caste meetings that articulate demands for their social uplift.

But political observrs are of the view that the very programme in which the prime minister attended in New Delhi on May 22 was organized to woo Bhumihars. His political rivals have repeatedly been accusing him of doublespeak. Last year too he blatantly used the backward castes card to attract the voters towards the saffron party.

Similarly Amit Shah came all the way to Patna to address the rallies organized on the occasion of Karpoori Thakur and B R Ambedkar to allure the EBC and Dalit voters. On May 17 the state BJP top brass gathered under the banner of the Rashtravadi Kushwaha Parisad to mark the 2,320th birth anniversary of emperor Ashoka and projected the Mauryan monarch as a member of the Kushwaha community, the second largest OBC group in the state.

Recently the party also organized the birth anniversary of Maharana Pratap in Patna to woo Rajputs. Ironically, many historians, including Romila Thapar, strongly dispute the claim that Ashoka was a Kushwaha (Koeri).

Romila Thapar, who is an authority on Mauryan period, says that according to the Buddhist scriptures, Chandragupta and Ashoka were Kshatriyas. She also says there is no historical evidence of the birth date of Emperor Ashoka. Not only that there is no historical evidence that Chandragupta and Ashoka were Kushwahas.

The Akhil Bhartiya Goswami Samaj claims that the community has 26 lakh voters, mostly in Chhapra, Siwan and Motihari.The function of Goswani Samaj projected Sushil Kumar Modi as the chief minister, though the party has not officially announced any such CM candidate. Its organizer Dhananjay Goswami addressed SuMo as the state’s “jan jan ke neta (popular mass leader)” and “future CM”.

In the same way at the May 17 meeting, its organizer Surajnandan Kushwaha, BJP MLC, had moved a resolution that Sushil Modi should lead the legislature party after the Assembly elections.

Union minister of state for HRD and RLSP leader Upendra Kushwaha, himself a Koeri, is opposed to any such suggestion of announcing SuMo as the CM candidate. Several BJP leaders, mostly belonging to the upper castes, are also opposed to SuMo being projected as the CM.