NEW DELHI: This is the first time Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken of contesting the election with JDU boss Nitish Kumar as the face of the campaign, although it does not automatically follow he will return as Chief Minister.
The National Democratic Alliance, under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, will break all records and win next month’s Bihar Assembly election by a massive margin, Prime Minister Modi said Friday afternoon.
“Entire Bihar is saying ‘phir ek baar NDA sarkar… phir ek baar sushasan sarkar’,” the Prime Minister said, kickstarting the bloc’s Bihar election campaign from the town of Samastipur.
It also followed a sharp jibe by the Mahagathbandhan alliance over the Bharatiya Janata Party’s apparent reluctance to name a chief ministerial candidate, as it has. The opposition bloc on Thursday confirmed Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav as its presumptive Chief Minister.
The opposition took a shot at the NDA; “I want to ask Amit Shah… our leader is Tejashwi Yadav. Now they should confirm who is their Chief Minister face,” said former Rajasthan CM and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot, who had been rushed to Bihar to resolve leadership issues between his party and the RJD, said.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav is the opposition’s chief ministerial candidate (File).
Yadav, who twice served as deputy to Nitish Kumar, also weighed in, and claimed a remark by Home Minister Amit Shah last week – that NDA leaders will ‘sit together and decide’ on the new chief minister if the alliance wins the election – indicated Nitish Kumar’s days are numbered.
The JDU boss’ future has been the subject of speculation in the build-up to this election, with the opposition taunting him over his allies dithering over formally naming him its leader.
Earlier this month Yadav also questioned Nitish Kumar’s mental health and fitness after a video of him greeting the Prime Minister as Atal Bihari Vajpayee – apparently repeatedly – was widely shared online.
The JDU, meanwhile, has repeatedly said it expects Nitish – already Bihar’s longest-serving chief minister – to remain in that role.
In April, even as buzz over his future in the job began, the party put up large posters across Patna insisting Nitish Kumar would continue till 2030, when he will be 79 years old.
Those posters followed a remark by BJP leader Nayab Singh Saini, the Haryana Chief Minister, about the saffron party winning this election “under the leadership of Samrat Choudhary”.
Choudhary is currently one of Bihar’s two deputy chief ministers.
Meanwhile, the PM also praised the BJP for development work in Bihar over the past five years, declaring, “There is not a single corner where the BJP isn’t carrying out development work.”
“Bihar is now an attractive investment destination. I foresee a future in which every district will be teeming with local start-ups… all this would not have been possible had there been ‘jungle raj’ in Bihar,” he intoned, in one of several swipes at the RJD of ex-Chief Minister Lalu Yadav.
Bihar will vote in two phases; the first is on November 6 and the second on November 11. The results will be out on November 14, when the counting is scheduled.
All the picture credit social media
