Chief Minister Nitish Kumar does not want polls to be held under President’s rule.
New Delhi: Ignoring the inputs of its present and former MLAs who had requested to postpone the Bihar Assembly elections from October this year to March 2021, the state BJP leadership has asked its party leaders and workers to start going to the ground and ready themselves for the elections that are likely to happen on schedule, in October.
Last week, state party president Sanjay Jaiswal, who has been interacting with prominent party leaders through video conferencing, was told by at least five MLAs, sitting and former, to convey to the central leadership that there was a massive negative sentiment against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar among the rural voters due to his mishandling of the migrants’ issue and if the elections are held in October, the BJP will have to bear the brunt of this negative sentiment generated by Nitish Kumar. The BJP has been ruling Bihar for more than one decade in an alliance with the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal United (JDU).
However, these BJP leaders were told by Jaiswal that he could do nothing as the orders to prepare for the elections that will happen in October had come from above (“upar se”).
This decision, as per multiple BJP state party leaders, has been influenced by Nitish Kumar who does not want the election to be held under President’s Rule and the BJP leadership acceded to his request as they feel that the BJP cannot do well in Bihar without the support of Nitish Kumar, especially because of a resurgent RJD led by Tejashwi Yadav, who has managed to consolidate, as per sources close to him, the Yadav voters who had moved away from the party. The other traditional vote bank of the RJD, the Muslims, will likely vote for the party in large numbers due to their anger against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
“We told Jaiswalji that it is better to postpone the elections to March as inputs from the ground given to us by party workers and sympathisers clearly suggest that the voters, especially in the rural pockets, are very angry with our face (Nitish Kumar). However, he expressed his helplessness and stated that the decision not to postpone the elections has been taken by the top leadership,” a party MLA who interacted with Jaiswal over Zoom meeting told The Sunday Guardian. This was confirmed independently by three other present and former MLAs.
It is pertinent to mention that Jaiswal, who is BJP’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, himself has been critical of Nitish Kumar and Nitish Kumar’s handling of Covid-19 related issues. He had expressed his displeasure through a Facebook post, which he later deleted after reportedly being asked to do by the party’s central leadership.
In an interview to a Hindi daily on Friday, Jaiswal stated that the elections would be held on time, thereby confirming The Sunday Guardian’s report that discussion to postpone the election had been taking place. The Sunday Guardian had earlier written that the state was looking at President’s Rule in the wake of Covid-19 (Bihar stares at President’s Rule as Covid-19 spreads, 9 May) and inputs from state leaders that the time was not right to conduct the elections in the state right now. The inputs given by local RSS leaders too had stated that there was negative sentiment among the voters against Nitish Kumar and strong, concerted measures were needed to tide over them.
The state BJP, like it has in the last few years, will be banking on the personal goodwill of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hide the administrative failure of Nitish Kumar’s government which has come to the fore many times in the recent past, including the massive inundation of Patna due to seasonal rains, which was best captured in a picture that showed the state Deputy CM and senior BJP Leader Sushil Modi being rescued in a small boat from the heart of the Patna and the way Nitish Kumar “surrendered” in the wake of the migrants’ crisis and stated that he could not take care of so many people.