Shah meets NDA leaders at Nitish Kumar’s residence
Patna, Mar 30 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday discussed the strategy for assembly polls, due later this year, with NDA partners in the state.
The meeting was held at 1, Anne Marg, the official residence of the chief minister, who heads the JD(U) and will run for a fifth consecutive term in office in the forthcoming elections.
Shah, who had earlier shared the stage with Kumar at a function where central and state projects worth more than Rs 8,000 crore were launched, reached the CM’s house after addressing a BJP rally in Gopalganj.
The JD(U) supremo received the former BJP president with a bouquet and the two leaders sat at the head table, in the conference room where the meeting took place.
Union minister Chirag Paswan, who heads the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), briefly spoke to journalists after the meeting.
“The discussions focused on how to strengthen the coalition in the run-up to the elections”, said the Hajipur MP, whose party is expected to demand a “respectable” share in the assembly polls, citing its brilliant performance in the Lok Sabha elections.
Currently, Paswan’s party has no representation in the state assembly but in last year’s Lok Sabha elections, the LJP(RV) won all the five seats it contested, with comfortable margins.
Paswan, whose own political stock has risen since he won by close to two lakh votes a seat his late father Ram Vilas Paswan had represented multiple times, downplayed the meeting at CM’s residence lasting for “just a few minutes”.
He insisted “it was over quickly because there were no thorny issues on the agenda”.
Besides senior leaders of the JD(U) and the BJP, including state ministers, the meeting was attended by Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, and Rajya Sabha MP Upendra Kushwaha, who is the founding president of Rashtriya Lok Morcha.
Although Kumar has been the NDA’s “face” in Bihar for nearly two decades, speculations are rife that the BJP may have second thoughts this time, in view of the JD(U) supremo’s rumoured ill health.
Kumar, whose past track record of abrupt exits from the NDA keeps the BJP on tenterhooks, has been maintaining that he was back for good.
