Patna: With just seven to eight months remaining for the Lok Sabha polls, the ruling BJP wants to weaken the opposition parties by focusing on the corruption of their leaders.
The CBI has filed a plea in the Supreme Court for the cancellation of the bail of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam and the hearing of this case is scheduled at the end of this month. The main idea seems to be to put Lalu Prasad behind bars to cut his direct contact with the common people as he is probably the number one crowd puller in Bihar.
In a bid to counter the strategy of the BJP, the leaders of the opposition grouping INDIA are also opting for a similar approach by raising the issues of the Hindenburg report pertaining to the Adani issue and the scam of the NCP.
Now it is a game of perception between the NDA and INDIA in Bihar.
In the last few months, the poll strategists of the BJP have made blunders in the context of Bihar.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the Darbhanga AIIMS was built by the Centre. His statement was wrong as no AIIMS has been constructed and Modi and the BJP leaders faced an awkward situation. Actually it was a failure of the Central government officials who did not give the right information to the PM.
The leaders of INDIA like Tejashwi Yadav, JD-U state president Lalan Singh and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar criticized the PM for his statement.
Union home minister Amit Shah during a Purnea rally on September 22, 2022 claimed that 95% of the airport here was constructed with the help of the Union civil aviation ministry. This statement also turned out to be wrong as only the land was earmarked but no construction has happened there.
Amit Shah, during a Nawada rally also claimed to have opened a thermal power plant in Hisua. That claim was also not correct as there is no thermal power plant in Nawada.
The BJP is going for the Lok Sabha polls but it seems the central leadership is not asking about the ground reality from its state leaders. It seems to be a communication gap which is resulting in factual mistakes by the top leadership of the saffron party.
Such mistakes are sending wrong signals to the people.
According to an official of the BJP Bihar unit, the party’s top leadership has instructed the leaders of Bihar to raise cases of crime in the state. The idea is to compare the crime cases of Bihar with the Yogi model of governance and seek public support.
Leaders of the opposition parties under the umbrella of INDIA are focusing on fulfilling the promises they made during the assembly elections in 2020. The 2024 Lok Sabha poll is a do or die situation for the opposition leaders. They understand that if they lose the battle of 2024, they will be finished in the states as well.
They saw recently when the Delhi amendment bill was passed in Parliament that the Centre is ruling the national capital despite losing the election there. The opposition leaders believe that such action will be taken against the non BJP ruled states post 2024.
The opposition leaders are already saying that if the Narendra Modi government will come to power again, it will change the Constitution.
Keeping this in view, the Nitish-Tejashwi government in Bihar is focusing on providing jobs to as many unemployed youths as they can to make their political ground strong in the state.
Nitish Kumar, during his speech on August 15, claimed that his government has given 55,000 government jobs and created around 3.5 lakh jobs in various sectors. He also mentioned that 1.70 lakh teachers will be appointed soon. The examination for teachers’ recruitment will be held in Bihar from August 24 to 27.
The leaders of the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) in Bihar are looking to stay united. For the JD-U, Nitish Kumar, Lalan Singh, Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, Ashok Chaudhary, Sanjay Kumar Jha are the think tank of the party and they are making strategy and policies ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Nitish Kumar has claimed that he has no ambition to become Prime Minister but people know how tough a bargainer he is.
For the RJD, everything revolves around Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi Yadav. The biggest headache for them are the corruption cases lodged against them in the fodder scam and the IRCTC scam. Lalu Prasad has been convicted in the fodder scam while Tejashwi Yadav is embroiled in the IRCTC land for job case.
Despite the court cases, the father and son know that they are the biggest political force in Bihar. They have proven it in 2015 when they won 80 MLA seats and in the 2020 assembly election when the party won 75 seats. Their Muslim-Yadav equation is intact in Bihar and the BJP has an extremely tough job to disturb that equation.
The BJP in the past was playing with parties which turned Vote Katwa for the Mahagathbandhan. This time Nitish Kumar and Tejashwi Yadav have filled the gap as they came up with a one seat one candidate formula to minimize the loss of votes through the Chirag or Owaisi factor.
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