Patna: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asserted that the NDA under the leadership of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar would sweep the upcoming state polls by breaking all previous records and getting the biggest mandate ever.
Kickstarting his election campaign for NDA at Doodhpura in Samastipur district, Modi said that people of Bihar would not allow the return of Jungle Raj, as Bihar was poised to progress with a new speed after the formation of the NDA once again in the state.
Addressing a day after the Congress endorsed RJD leader Tejashwi as the CM face of the INDIA bloc, PM heaped praise on Nitish for his various development initiatives and credited him for ending jungle raj in the state. He said that law and order could not exist where a party like the RJD was in power. Under the RJD rule, extortion, murder, ransom, and kidnapping flourished, he stated, adding that RJD's jungle raj ruined generations of Bihar.
Before addressing the election rally, Modi visited the ancestral house of former Bihar chief minister late Karpoori Thakur in Karpoorigram and paid his tributes to the socialist icon and interacted with his family members. His son, Ram Nath Thakur is a JD (U) and presently serving as union minister of state. The Modi government had bestowed the country`s highest civilian award, ‘Bharat Ratna’ to him posthumously in January last year. The move was seen as part of NDA`s gameplan to woo EBCs before the LS polls. Thakur belonged to Nai caste, which is listed as an EBC caste in Bihar. EBCs constitute 36.1 percent of the state`s population.
Reflecting on the BJP's winning streak in various states, Modi said that the people of Maharashtra gave a bigger majority than before as Haryana did the same and elected the party for a third term.
“In Madhya Pradesh, too, the BJP has been in power for a long time. We’ve seen this in Gujarat and Uttarakhand as well. In Gujarat, the BJP has been in power for over two decades, and in Uttar Pradesh, where governments change every five years, the BJP ended that trend. All this shows that the NDA stands for good governance, public service, and guaranteed development. I can now say with full confidence that under Nitish Kumar’s leadership, NDA will break its own record in Bihar and secure the biggest mandate ever," he said.
