Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a meeting at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi along with Bihar unit leaders on Tuesday to discuss the party’s future course of action including, the selection of a new state party chief, Leader of Opposition in Assembly and Legislative Council and the strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The meeting takes place after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar inducted thirty-one ministers in his government including RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav who has returned as his deputy. With RJD getting a lion’s share, Kumar formed a ‘Mahagathbandhan’ government in Bihar after the JD(U) severed ties with the BJP.
The meeting was chaired by Shah and BJP president J P Nadda.
Bihar BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal told reporters that the JD(U)-RJD alliance is a betrayal of people’s mandate and gives backdoor entry to “Lalu raj”, a reference to the alleged misrule under the 15-year RJD reign when Lalu Prasad Yadav was either chief minister or seen to be ruling by proxy when he installed his wife at the helm. Jaiswal claimed the poor considers Prime Minister Narendra Modi their “messiah” and the BJP will win more than 35 of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2024 when the general election is scheduled to be held.
Party sources said the BJP will now go out aggressively in wooing communities which it did not approach much earlier, a reference to the extremely backward and a section of Dalits considered core supporters of the JD(U).
The party will also work to build its base across the state as it has mostly contested on less than half of its seats in alliance with the JD(U). Shah and Nadda deliberated with the state leaders as they strategised over the party’s future course of action. The BJP sources cited the feedback the party had received from its members, who were sent across 200 assembly seats in the state recently, to indicate about likely changes in the state.
The feedback was gathered ahead of a meeting of all BJP ‘morchas’ in Patna last month. One of the highlights of the feedback was that while Modi continues to remain popular among people, they were not happy with the local leadership of the BJP.
While the meeting was held when Chief Minister Kumar was still heading the JD(U)- BJP government, the feedback received by the party said Kumar’s stock had been falling among people, sources said. Kumar’s decision to snap ties with the BJP also presents the party an opportunity to expand its base, they said, adding that it may have to rejig its state leadership for this.
The BJP’s national media co-incharge Sanjay Mayukh had said the meeting will firm up the party’s strategy in the state in taking on the JD(U)-RJD government which he termed “disjointed”. “It’s Jungle Raj 2.0 in Bihar. As far as the BJP is concerned we will raise our voice and take the issues of people from the road to Assembly.”
Mayukh, who is a BJP MLC in Bihar, said party general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh would also be present.
Union ministers Ashwini Choubey, Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai, and the party’s senior leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Sushil Modi were among the state leaders who attended the meeting.
This will be the first meeting of the state BJP leaders with the central leadership after Kumar snapped ties with it on August 9 and joined hands with the RJD-led alliance, which includes the Congress and the Left.
Meanwhile, the BJP has alleged that the new cabinet in Bihar reflected “social imbalance” and patronage to those with criminal antecedents in the ‘Mahagathbandhan’. Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said in a statement that “two communities” had grabbed “more than 33 per cent” of berths in the 33-strong cabinet that includes the Chief Minister and RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav who has returned as his deputy.
Modi’s allusion was to Yadavs and Muslims, largely seen as loyal to the RJD. The two social groups together have 13 cabinet berths, including those from the Chief Minister’s JD(U) and the Congress. The former Deputy CM also referred to serious criminal cases against new inductees like Lalit Yadav, Surendra Yadav, Ramanand Yadav, and Kartikeya Singh.
He also pointed out that the new cabinet had “zero representation” from among Telis and upper caste Kayasthas while the number of Rajputs has gone down compared with the previous government of which BJP was a part. “I wonder what are Nitish Kumar’s compulsions (majboori) behind agreeing to such social imbalance and criminalisation”, said Modi.
(With inputs from PTI)
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