Twisting the facts is a favourite pastime of politicians, especially of those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The latest statement of its national president Amit Shah that BJP’s defeat in Bihar would be greeted with the bursting of fire crackers in Pakistan is one such example.

The party leaders were quick to come to his support. They cited the example of Delhi Assembly election of February 2015.

The truth, however, is something different. What was hailed in Pakistan was not the defeat of the BJP as their leaders are trying to make out, but the emergence of a phenomenon called Aam Admi Party. Whether the AAP government in last eight and a half months have delivered or not is a dfferent subject, the people’s mandate Arvind Kejriwal got was hailed by various leaders, intellectuals and mediapersons in Pakistan. Many of them stressed the need for having a party like AAP in their country to fight corruption. Even the international Press paid attention to this development. Had Congress defeated the BJP in Delhi or vice versa, it would not have got so much coverage either in Pakistan or any other country.

But what the saffron brigade will now not highlight is that Tahreek-e-Insaf Party leader, Imran Khan, even applauded Nitish Kumar at the height of JD(U)-BJP government. Those were the days when the BJP leaders were also praising Nitish Kumar to the sky and Sushil Kumar Modi was seeing a prime ministerial material in him.

Crackers were burst not in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi after the victory of Nitish Kumar in 2005 or 2010, but in the cities and villages of Bihar.

When Nitish went to Pakistan in November 2012 and celebrated Diwali there he was heading the NDA government in Bihar. Leaders in Pakistan welcomed him as any foreign dignitary.

In fact Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visisted the country twice and the first thing Narendra Modi did was to invite his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, at his swearing-in ceremony on May 26, 2014.

So the speeches like the one given by Amit Shah not only lower his own stature, but expose the panic within the party. He had, in a way, conceded that the BJP may lose the election.

People in Bihar are now not so naïve as to not understand the worry within the saffron brigade.