Rahul Gandhi, PM Modi line up poll-bound Bihar visits as India-Pak tensions ease

Patna: With the frenzy over an impending Indo-Pak 'war' is over, leaders of both the NDA and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc have now started pulling up their socks and planning visits of their respective top crowd-pullers for the poll-bound Bihar which will have an Assembly election in October and November this year.

It is against this backdrop that former Congress president and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi will visit Bihar in the third week of this month, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi will tour the state in May-end and address a rally at Rohtas in Bihar, bordering PM’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi in UP.

Rahul Gandhi is likely to visit Bihar on May 15 where he may address the party workers at Gaya, besides Darbhanga too. This will be Rahul’s fourth visit to Bihar in the last five months as he visited the poll-bound state on January 18, followed by another visit on February 4 and then on April 7 where he participated in Kanhaiya Kumar’s pad-yatra.

Rahul, who is trying to infuse a new lease of life into the moribund Congress, is also likely to discuss the seat-sharing arrangement with the RJD, as the latter is reportedly not keen on leaving too many seats for the grand old party.

Meanwhile, the Bihar BJP chief Dilip Jaiswal held a party-level meet of his top office-bearers where they discussed the preparedness for PM Narendra Modi’s proposed rally at Bikramganj in Rohtas district. Senior PMO officials are also working out Modi’s tour plan after which the dates will be announced.

“PM’s Bihar visit plan will be finalised in a couple of days. Most probably, the PM's rally will be held in the last week of May. The Rohtas district administration has been asked to assess the arrangements, particularly parking and traffic, before the PMO gives final shape to Modi’s plan,” said Jaiswal.

Modi, who was in Bihar on April 24, just two days after the Pahalgam terror attack, chose the state to give a message to the world that “those who are behind the attack will be identified, traced and punished in such a way which will be beyond their imagination.”

Known for his oratory skills, the BJP is planning PM’s visit in Rohtas as this is the Shahabad region in Central and Western Bihar where the BJP lost all the four crucial Lok Sabha seats: Ara, Sasaram, Aurangabad and Buxar in 2024.

“Leaving nothing to chance, the BJP is planning frequent visits of its tallest leader who could swing the party’s fortunes in this emotionally-charged atmosphere in a State which has not seen a BJP CM so far,” averred political scientist Ajay Kumar.