Talking to the mediapersons on Wednesday he said that firstly he had not given any interview; and secondly, there is no such controversy over the invitation to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to Hunkar Rally in Patna. He said that Hunkar Rally is six months from now and it would not be appropriate to say now as to who would be invited and who not for that rally.

On the other hand Nalin Verma, the special correspondent of the Telegraph, who conducted the exclusive interview and which was carried on page-one on Wednesday stood by his story.

It needs to be recalled that a couple of months back the Week carried an interview of the chief minister Nitish Kumar on its net edition. It was taken by its special correspondent Kanhaiya Bhelari. However, within hours the chief minister flatly denied that he had given any interview to that weekly magazine. The magazine was forced to withdraw its content from the website.

However, in the case of the Telegraph the interview was carried in the print edition. Since Sushil Modi had spoken against Dr C P Thakur and other leaders it caused a storm of sort in the BJP circle. Perhaps this compelled the deputy chief minister to wash his hands of from the interview itself, feel political observers.

A few weeks back too Sushil Modi gave an interview to the Indian Express and talked about Nitish Kumar being a prime ministerial material. But when the following day mediapersons tried to seek his opinion on the interview he refused to make any comment.

Interestingly, in all these three cases of denials the issue was Nitish Kumar-Narendra Modi controversy.

There is now growing feeling among the journalists of Bihar that the NDA leaders are using newspapers for political objective. Since it is difficult to deny controversial statement given on TV channels it is better to use the newspapers.