PM Modi addresses rally in Bhabua, talks about development

A BJP supporter wearing Modi ” s ask greeting people during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally.

With the huge stakes, Modi has been campaigning extensively in Bihar, which his party wants to wrest from a regional party, the Janata Dal (United).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi prominently raised the issue at his rallies in Jehanabad and Bhubua on October 12, a day after the damning video surfaced on the 113th birth anniversary of socialist icon Jayaprakash Narayan. More than 13.5 million voters will cast their votes at almost 13,000 highly guarded polling stations across the state in the first phase.

Shri Naqvi urged the Election Commission that it should interfere into efforts of obstructing meetings, programmes of the Prime Minister and other senior leaders of the party; un-constitutional demand of ban on these programmes and their telecast; and the Bihar Government’s efforts to pressurize the administration.

A win in Bihar would give Mr Modi momentum in about a dozen more state polls through 2017 that will determine control of the body. A BJP advertisement that appeared in Hindi dailies the morning after the first phase contained images of Amit Shah along with several local party leaders and allies.

The BJP has a loyal vote bank in Bihar, but the critical factor will be the vote swings it can muster in an era of polarisation.

He hit out at Nitish’s Grand alliance for focusing its campaign around Modi’s Vinash and not Bihar’s Vikas.

While the BJP has a majority in the Lower House of the Parliament, it has only about a quarter of the 245 members in the Upper House, where seats are distributed based on the strength of political parties in state assemblies. Earlier in the day, Shiv Sena ministers boycotted the ground-breaking ceremony for the memorial after party chief Uddhav Thackeray was not invited to the function, reflecting the widening rift between the saffron partners in the ruling coalition in Maharashtra.

A 50-year-old Muslim man was killed by a lynch mob in a northern Indian village last month over rumours that he ate beef.

But the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister alleged that Nitish Kumar became arrogant after taking office.

Then he told voters that BJP has declared Gujarat as a developed state.

“The Bihar election will be the biggest electoral test for the Mr Modi-led BJP government thus far”, write Milan Vaishnav and Saksham Khosla of Carnegie Endowment’s South Asia Program in a paper on the elections.