Bharatiya Janata Party President Jagat Prakash Nadda on Sunday said the National Democratic Alliance in Bihar – comprising the Janata Dal (United), the Lok Janshakti Party and the BJP – would fight the upcoming Assembly elections together under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, PTI reported. The state goes for polls in November.
Nadda’s declaration came amid a bitter war of words between Kumar and LJP chief Chirag Paswan, who has been a vocal critic of the chief minister. In an interview with The Hindu on August 12, Paswan said he had not met or spoken to Kumar for a year now. However, the BJP has repeatedly maintained that there is no discord between the two leaders and has asserted that the NDA has stuck to Kumar’s projection as its chief ministerial candidate.
“We will fight Bihar polls together and emerge victorious,” Nadda said in a virtual meeting of the Bihar unit of the BJP. “People of Bihar look at the BJP and the NDA with the expectation that we will change the fate and picture of the state,” he told party workers. “For this we have to contest at each and every booth to win and add value not only for BJP contestants but also for alliance partners.”
The BJP chief took a swipe at the Opposition parties in Bihar and said they had become a “spent force”. “The Opposition has neither ideology nor vision nor any spirit to serve people, and it can’t rise above petty politics,” he said. Nadda told the BJP workers that theirs was the only party that was being “looked at with hope” by the people of the state.
Nadda also praised the Bihar government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as of the flood situation in the state. However, he cautioned all BJP workers to be wry of the spread of Covid-19 and asked them to take all precautionary measures while campaigning.
Bihar has reported 94,858 coronavirus cases, including 503 deaths as of Sunday, according to the Union health ministry.
The BJP president also shared details of the Narendra Modi-led government’s work to boost healthcare measures to battle the pandemic and claimed that the special economic packages announced by the Centre has been implemented in “letter and spirit”.
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