Amit Shah Sounds Poll Bugle For Bihar Elections 2020 At 'Virtual Rally'

NEW DELHI: Sounding the poll bugle for the Bihar Assembly polls, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday in a first of its kind ‘virtual rally’, expressed confidence that the NDA will get a two-third majority under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's leadership.

Shah addressed the people of the state from the national capital using internet and broadcast mediums. The state polls are due on October-November.

“Elections are around the corner in Bihar. I am confident that the NDA will form the government under Nitish Kumar’s leadership with a two-third majority,” he said.

With opposition parties attacking the BJP for holding the rally at a time when coronavirus infection numbers continue to surge, Shah took pains to delink the exercise with Bihar poll campaign, saying it is one of the 75 virtual public meetings that the party has organised for ‘Jan Samvad’ (public dialogue) after the completion of the first year of the Modi government’s second term. It is aimed at connecting people with the fight against the coronavirus and with the government’s ‘Aatmnirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliant India) campaign as the BJP believes in public dialogue, he said.

His speech was interspersed with digs at opposition leaders, including RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav over his absence from Bihar after the COVID-19 outbreak and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, as he highlighted the Modi government's achievements and strongly defended its handling of the migrants issue

Shah also praised Kumar and his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi, who is from the BJP, and said Bihar’s growth rate had reached 11.3 per cent under the NDA rule while it was just 3.9 per cent when former chief minister Lalu Prasad’s RJD was in power.

“Bihar has travelled from 'lalten raj' to 'LED raj', from loot and order to law and order, from 'bahubal' (muscle power) to power of development and from 'jungle raj to janata raj',” Shah said.

Listing out several measures, including cash transfer, taken by the Bihar government, Shah said in a lighter vein that while Kumar and Modi have done a lot of work quietly, they lack in doing its publicity. The Rs 1.25 lakh crore package that Modi had announced for Bihar in 2015 has been executed on ground, he said, giving details of works in different sectors, like highways and agriculture.

The BJP claimed that more than 14 lakh internet users joined the first of its kind digital political rally.