BJP’S Shah meets Nitish, quells talk of friction in alliance
PATNA: Ending weeks of speculation over a rift in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) camp in Bihar, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah said on Thursday the alliance was intact and, with chief minister Nitish Kumar in the fold, would win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the general elections next year.
Shah’s remarks came at a meeting of party leaders in Patna, soon after his breakfast meeting with Kumar, who is the Janata Dal (United) president.
“Stop salivating. We know how to manage our partners and walk the mile with our friends,” Shah said in an apparent rebuff to opposition parties, who were reportedly trying to court Kumar in the wake of voices of discord over seat-sharing in the NDA.
The BJP functionaries said that Shah was happy with the outcome of his breakfast and dinner meetings with the JD(U) chief. “The meeting has sealed that JD(U) will remain an integral and important ally of the BJP. Issues like seat-sharing will be sorted out amicably,” said a top BJP leader on the condition of anonymity.
The BJP, besides Shah, was represented at Kumar’s dinner by the party’s state president Nityanand Rai, deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and other ministers. Unlike the breakfast meeting, where the JD(U) was represented by only Kumar, the dinner was attended by JD(U) Bihar president Bashistha Narain Singh and other senior ministers.
Hitting out at the Opposition for trying to band together to counter the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Shah said: “All the leaders who plan to join hands had fought against us in 2014.”
“We defeated them comprehensively to form the government then. We are going to form a majority government in 2019 as well. The winning spree of our ideology, after initial hiccups, has just begun and it is not going to stop so soon,” he said.
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