Patna, Oct 4 (PTI) A meeting of the BJP election committee for Bihar was held here on Saturday to discuss, among other things, the party’s strategy and prospective candidates for the upcoming state assembly polls.
The meeting, which was held late in the evening at the party’s state headquarters, was chaired by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who has been named the party’s in charge for the elections, which are likely to be announced soon.
BJP national general secretary in-charge for Bihar Vinod Tawde, who was present at the meeting, wrote on his X handle, “Bihar is ready to elect a development-oriented government once again. At the Bihar election committee meeting today, discussions were held on prospective candidates for upcoming polls”.
Others present at the meeting included Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who has been named the BJP’s co-in-charge, Union ministers Nityanand Rai and Giriraj Singh and local MP Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Kumar Sinha, who was also present at the meeting, wrote on his X handle, “Extensive discussions were held today on the upcoming assembly polls at the Bihar election committee meeting. Under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Bihar has set new standards of development, good governance and public welfare”.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, Bihar BJP chief Dilip Jaiswal said, “Today, our focus was on 60 of our seats. The committee will meet again tomorrow when we will take up the remaining seats where we won as well as the ones we lost in the last elections”.
In the 2020 assembly polls, the BJP had contested 110 seats of the 243-strong assembly, and won 74 of these.
Jaiswal sidestepped queries on whether the BJP would insist on having the upper hand, given the party’s superior numbers compared with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U). “There is going to be no big brother-little brother dynamic in the NDA. The coalition is rock solid under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, who has outsmarted the INDIA bloc by delivering on what they had merely promised,” Jaiswal told reporters.
He was referring to recent populist measures announced by the NDA government, which had prompted leader of opposition Tejashwi Yadav to allege that the ruling coalition was acting like a “copycat”.
Responding to another query, Jaiswal said, “Sitting MLAs who have performed well and face no strong anti-incumbency may get another chance. Others may have to be replaced with fresh faces”.
Asked whether he was likely to enter the fray himself, Jaiswal, a member of the legislative council said, “Such a decision can be taken only at the top level. As of now, I am busy playing the role of a guardian (abhibhavak) in Bihar BJP”.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)
