Nitish will be our CM face in Bihar, says Amit Shah
nVAISHALI GARH: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday said that Nitish Kumar would be the chief ministerial candidate in Bihar and the alliance between his party and the Janata Dal (United) was “unbreakable”, putting to rest speculation of a rift between the allies over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, and a proposed all-india National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Shah was addressing a rally at the Gharauna Pokhar ground in Vaishali district to drum up support for the new citizenship law.
With Bihar scheduled to go to the polls in October, Shah said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre, and Nitish Kumar will lead the alliance in the state.
“I want to end all rumours by declaring openly here that the next assembly elections in Bihar will be fought under the leadershah ship of Nitish Kumar,” he said.
“Lalu Prasad (Rashtriya Janata Dal chief), who is in jail in corruption cases, may go on dreaming that our coalition will come apart. But he should know that the NDA has led Bihar out of his lantern age (an allusion to the RJD’S poll symbol) to the LED era...the country and the state shall progress under the leadership of Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, respectively,” PTI quoted Shah as saying.
Attacking the Opposition, especially the RJD and the Congress, Shah said it was the NDA, which led the state from “jungle raj” to “janta raj” (people’s rule) from 2005 to 2020.
also attacked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, blaming them for the violence that took place in different parts of India in protests against CAA. “Opposition parties engineered anti-caa riots, which forced the BJP to hold rallies across the country to apprise people of their nefarious designs,” Shah said.
RJD national vice-president Shivanand Tiwary said Shah’s assertion that Nitish Kumar would be the CM’S face of the NDA for the 2020 polls was on expected lines. “The announcement by Shah batting for CM Nitish as NDA’S face for the top post reflects how the BJP has backtracked on its plans to go alone in Bihar, realising it cannot win the polls independently.”
According to Prabhat Prasad Ghosh, director , Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna, and an avid political observer, “Both partners may have had some differences of opinion but there was no major confrontation as such.”