The Congress party on Monday decided not to take part in the 'lathi rally' of the Rashtriya Janata Dal to be headed by Laloo Prasad Yadav.

While the Bihar state Congress president Shakeel Ahmad made it clear that there will be no participation of the Congress in the RJD rally, a strong section in the party favours supporting the rally as it is directed against the Bharatiya Janata Party. The group that has been putting pressure to oppose the rally is the same that has been demanding withdrawal of support to the RJD government led by Rabri Devi, Laloo's wife.

Laloo has asked his supporters to turn up on Wednesday with 'well-oiled lathis' for the BJP Bhagao, Desh Bachao rally.

The split in the Congress on the issue of participating in the rally came to the fore with Congress leader and former legislator Dilip Rai claiming that he would send 200,000 lathis from Samastipur district alone to rally. In fact, quite a few Congress leaders shouted down Rai when he wanted to move a resolution in favour of the rally. Senior Congresss leader Umakant Singh went to extent of urging Ahmad to take disciplinary action against Congress leaders issuing statements in favour of the RJD rally.

Though the Bihar Congress spokesman Azmi Bari touted the official line saying the rally was an internal matter of the RJD he added in the same breath that there was nothing with the RJD distributing lathis when the VHP could distribute trishuls.

The Congress has only 12 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar assembly. The RJD initially was in a minority but has achieved majority support by engineering defections from opposition parties.