Union home minister Amit Shah will address the people of Bihar on Sunday, in his first virtual rally ahead of the assembly elections in Bihar. The elections are due in the state later this year.
Through this rally, Shah will sound the poll bugle and it will also be broadcast live on Facebook, Bihar BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal said. He also said that the party has set a target of roping in “at least one lakh people across the 243 assembly segments in the state” for the event.
Days before the rally, the BJP rejected Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) national president Chirag Paswan’s proposal of backing the saffron party even if it opts for a change of face in the assembly polls. The BJP reiterated that the elections will be contested only under the leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar only.
“Former national president and Union home minister Amit Shah had already made an announcement in this regard that Nitish Kumar will be the face of the NDA in Bihar. The BJP stands by it. Nitishji will be our face and forthcoming elections will be contested on the policies and achievements of both Centre and the state,” the BJP’s Bihar in-charge Bhupendra Yadav said at a virtual meeting on Friday.
Shah had declared in late 2019 that Nitish Kumar will lead the alliance in the next assembly elections.
The BJP leader’s announcement comes at the backdrop of an interview given by the LJP president to a news agency in which he mooted the idea of backing the BJP, if it opts for a change of face in the Bihar assembly polls scheduled later this year.
Paswan had recently expressed his dissatisfaction with the Bihar chief minister’s handling of the migrant crisis.
Meanwhile, the Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) called Shah’s rally during the coronavirus crisis is “political vulturism” and alleged that the BJP was only interested in electoral victory even at the cost of human lives.
“Electioneering at this juncture is nothing but political vulturism. Rather than helping the poor, needy and migrants, they want to win elections even at the cost of human lives,” RJD leader and Leader of the Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav told news agency PTI on Saturday.
The RJD is set to observe “Garib Adhikar Diwas” to counter Shah’s rally.
The BJP, the Janata Dal United or JD(U) and the LJP are part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state and are likely to be challenged by the RJD-Congress combine besides some smaller parties in the assembly polls.
In the 2015 assembly polls, the NDA had lost badly to the grand alliance of the RJD-JD(U)-Congress but Nitish Kumar broke ties with his allies in 2017 and entered the saffron alliance again after a gap of over four years.
