Law Kumar Mishra
Patna, October 6
At a joint press conference of BJP and JDU here this afternoon, the focus shifted to the LJP president Chirag Paswan rather than the list of assembly election aspirants for which it was convened.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is under severe attack from Chirag for the last few weeks, spoke in public for the first time and lashed “One should not forget Ram Vilas Paswan is in Rajya Sabha only because of me. LJP has two MLAs and due to the support of JDU and BJP, he can be elected to Rajya Sabha.”
Nitish did not mention Chirag by name but dismissed his comments on the working of the state government and alleged corruption in government programmes with utter contempt by saying: “I do not care. Such things are being done for cheap publicity.”
Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who shared the platform with Nitish appealed to the media not to give undue importance to such statements of Chirag. “In the last 15 years, our government has achieved a lot, launched several welfare programmes,” he said.
He told Chirag, Ram Vilas Paswan was facilitated to travel in helicopters and campaign with him and the Chief Minister in the previous elections.
Responding to the charge of Chirag that Nitish lacked leadership qualities and he would be replaced by the BJP-LJP government after the elections, Sushil Modi said “Even if the JDU gets lesser seats than BJP, Nitish Kumar will be the chief minister.”
He disowned charges of BJP involved in the campaign launched by Chirag for change of NDA leadership in Bihar.
Both leaders described the JDU-BJP alliance as an unbreakable alliance and asked the LJP to leave NDA if leadership of Nitish was not acceptable. They said a clear message has been sent to the cadres of the two parties informing them that LJP was not in the alliance in Bihar.
Under the seat sharing agreement, JDU will get 122 seats including seven for the HAM(S) led by the former chief minister, Jeetan Ram Manjhi while BJP would field its candidates in 121 constituencies with 7 for the Vikas Sheel Insaan party of Mukesh Sahani.
The two leaders said names of the candidates and constituencies would be released by the respective party offices.
Two senior leaders of BJP joined LJP and announced their candidature from Dinara and Govindganj respectively. They were denied tickets as BJP allowed the two constituencies for JDU candidates.
