Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: In a bid to counter Rahul Gandhi's yatra, BJP-JDU focus on women, welfare

New Delhi: To undo any upset caused by the ‘vote chori’ yatra by Rahul Gandhi and Tejaswi Yadav, the BJP-JDU combine are going back to their traditional vote banks in Bihar – women and the poor.

Women have typically voted for both chief minister Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and for PM Narendra Modi in general. A slew of schemes right ahead of the polls that are set to benefit over 1.75 crore poor people are part of the ruling coalition’s poll strategy.

The party has identified over 1.75 crore people who are affected by poverty and hold ration cards and are giving them a soft-loan worth Rs 2 lakh without any guarantee. “The scheme will be given to the family via a woman who will provide livelihood for the entire family.

"They simply have to fill a form and give us an application for a scheme and through the jeevika bureaus, we will release the initial amount of Rs 10,000 to them immediately,” Bihar BJP leader and the party’s chief whip in Lok Sabha Sanjay Jaiswal said.

An amount of Rs 2000 crore has been set aside for it, he added. The 1.75 crore people have also been put under the Ayushman Bharat scheme.

Women have been a key voterbase for the BJP-JDU combine and apart from the aforementioned scheme, for young women, the party also has a scheme where a school and college going girl is set to get benefits worth Rs 54,000, starting from class 10. An amount of Rs 25,000 is given to the girl after she clears class 10, and another amount of Rs 27,000 after she graduates.

“Our focus is that we ensure one woman of each family is not just self independent, but also helps other members of her family earn money,” Jaiswal said. This scheme is set to give livelihood to 1 crore people, he said.

The BJP is also hoping to win a chunk of the Dalit-OBC votes in the state. “Since 2005, the maximum seats that the RJD has managed to win in the 243 member assembly is 80 or 32.5 per cent; and the Congress not more than 24. In the six reserved seats of the state last term, the RJD did won only one. So, we are not expecting them to outdo their best performances this term,” a senior spokesperson of the party said.