Bihar elections: Amid RJD-Congress team up, Amit Shah holds party meeting with BJP leaders in state

New Delhi: With the RJD-Congress combine amping up their poll push in Bihar, the BJP got into a huddle on Wednesday evening with union home minister and the party’s key electoral strategist Amit Shah holding a meeting with the party’s state unit to draw up a strategy. In focus, said leaders part of the meeting, was a plan to highlight the insult to the prime minister’s mother and a push in 39 seats where the margins for the BJP were wafer thin in the last assembly elections. Seat distribution was also discussed, but leaders said that, a lot more needs to be decided upon. 

Shah held meetings with leaders of the core committee including deputy CMs Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, state president Dilip Jaiswal, besides Vinod Tawde. 

While ticket distribution was discussed, nothing was finalised since some of the seats might be redistributed among NDA partners. An overall feedback and survey report has been prepared which was also discussed. 

The BJP’s key focus will be 39 seats where its win or loss margin was less than 10,000 votes. In the last assembly elections in 2020, in over 21 seats, the BJP’s win margin was less than 10,000 votes. In seats like Arrah, Barhara, Munger, Begusarai, Badhwar, Hajipur, Amnour, Pranpur and Parihar, its win margin was below 5000 votes. 

Similarly, in 18 seats, its loss margin was around 10,000 votes. Among these seats, in over 9 seats, the win margin was less than 5000. In seats like Kalyanpur, Kishanganj, Siwan and Bhagalpur the difference was around 1000 votes. In addition to that, in Kurhani, Bakhri and Dehri, the BJP lost by 712, 777 and 454 votes respectively. 

Leaders said that the primary focus of the BJP will be to retain the 21 they won with small margins, while winning the 18 that they lost in the same manner. 

The party is also preparing to go full steam on the issue of insult to the prime minister’s mother. The state unit’s Mahila Morcha has already called for a statewide bandh or Thursday. And similar protests are in the pipeline, said leaders. 

“The insult to PM Modi’s mother has caught a raw nerve, especially among the state’s women voters who have always stood by the prime minister,” said a leader of the state unit.

The party has seen the issue as a valid counter to the voter chori yatra of Rahul Gandhi and Tejaswi Yadav. The party has already formed a team of 98 people to counter the yatra, wherein these leaders are fanning across the state to hold press conferences, corner meetings and worker’s meetings to counter the narrative of vote theft.