It’s litmus test for Nitish in Rai Bareli of Bihar

Over 50 percent of the candidates are women and youth while close to 60 percent belong to South Carolina and backward castes, said senior BJP leader and Union Minister JP Nadda while releasing the list after the meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is fighting the toughest battle of his political career.

He added that PM will campaign for all four parties in Bihar and not just for BJP. Noting that all top six ranks were occupied by BJP-ruled states, besides Andhra Pradesh, where its ally TDP in power, he said Congress should respond to it and apologise for its politics. However, it boomeranged with, ironically, Mulayam walking out of it after the “insult” heaped on SP over seat-sharing arrangement by the “maha gathbandhan” in Bihar.

Chirag Paswan, while making it clear that they were shocked and disappointed, said that there was no question of walking out of the NDA.

The trains with BJP workers on board have departed from Patna to Raipur on September 7, to Mumbai (Sept 9), Bhopal (Sept 11) and Jaipur (Sept 13), JD (U) leaders K C Tyagi and Pavan Varma, RJD leader Manoj Jha, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala and eminent lawyer K T S Tulsi said. “He later demanded 10 per cent of the total seats of the assembly (25) and finally nearly got there”, a BJP insider said.

“We are fighting with the aim that we will be winning two-thirds of the seats“. Amit Shah dodged the question at the press conference, insisting only that the election will be fought in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

HAM-handedThe National Democratic Alliance has a seat-sharing formula to work with in Bihar, after several days of negotiations prompted primarily by former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s insistence on getting at least as many seats as the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party.

Shah explained why Bihar needs to vote for the BJP-led NDA.

The state government had been asking for a special package, but when it came Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said Modi had merely repackaged development projects which had been announced earlier. The law and order situation and development had become the biggest casualties during their rule.