By Ajay Kumar
Patna June 4 Amid buzz that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address four rallies in Bihar to counter the Opposition unity meeting scheduled on June 12, it looks like it is high time for the saffron party to save its fort.
While the Opposition parties are only talking about the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is eying not just 2024, but also the Bihar Assembly polls scheduled in 2025.
BJP is a party which is highly dependent on PM Narendra Modi. It was proven in Bihar when Nitish Kumar left the NDA in August 2022 and formed the government with the help of the Mahagathbandhan.
BJP's top leadership was highly disappointed with the performance of the state leadership, including then BJP state president Sanjay Jaiswal and two Deputy CMs Tar Kishore Prasad and Renu Devi.
Hence, Home Minister Amit Shah took control in his hand and held rallies in Purnea, Saran, Nawada and some other places. A rally was also scheduled in Sasaram on April 2, but it was cancelled after the communal violence that broke out in the district.
The Bihar police, after the Sasaram communal violence, claimed that some BJP leaders were involved in provoking people, which led to communal violence. One of its leaders, Jawahar Prasad, is lodged in jail following that violence.
The CBI, ED and Income Tax raids were conducted several times on Lalu Prasad's families and other RJD leaders. Despite all these tools being experimented, the ploy seems not to be working for the BJP in Bihar.
Hence, the BJP has no options other than to use its most powerful weapon, Narendra Modi, to pull things back in its favour.
In the context of Haryana, the Assembly elections were held in November 2014 and no one knew the name of Manohar Lal Khattar. Everyone was saying that Ram Vilash Sharma or Anil Vij were the front-runners for the post of CM, but Khattar was chosen for the top post.
Similarly, in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Manoj Sinha was the front runner for the post of Chief Minister, but the top leadership gave charge to Yogi Adityanath.
In the context of Bihar, Sushil Kumar Modi is the biggest saffron leader of the state. He was instrumental in fighting Lalu Prasad in the fodder and IRCTC scams.
After the BJP came to power in 2014, the power of Sushil Modi was reduced. Even in the 2020 Assembly elections, the BJP top leadership removed Sushil Kumar Modi and brought two unknown faces Tar Kishore Prasad and Renu Devi as two Deputy Chief Ministers.
As they were not performing in the interest of the party and failed to collaborate with Nitish Kumar, they were not given any post after the formation of the Mahagathbandhan government.
In a bid to reduce the stature of Sushil Kumar Modi, the BJP promoted Nityanad Rai, who belongs to the Yadav caste. He was appointed as state president of the party and also held the post of the MoS Home at the centre.
The intention was to bring the Yadav caste in the favour of BJP and hurt the MY equation of Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi Yadav.
After many moves of Nityanand Rai, he did not succeed in turning Yadav vote banks in the favour of the BJP.
When the move of the BJP to lure the Yadav vote bank did not work, it went on hurting the Lav-Kush equation of Nitish Kumar. Sources have said that the BJP was instrumental in separating Upendra Kushwaha out of the JD-U.
Once he formed the new party Rashtriya Lok Janata Dal (RLJD), the BJP put forth a Kushwaha leader, Samrat Chaudhary, for the top post as state president.
Samrat Chaudhary had started his political career from the RJD, and then he went to the JD-U before joining the BJP in 2018.
When Samrat Chaudhary was appointed as the state president of the party, it surprised most of the BJP leaders.
Chaudhary is now showing aggression against Nitish Kumar, saying that the next Chief Minister will come from the Kushwaha caste having 11 per cent vote bank in Bihar, holding the third position after Yadavd and Muslims.
Vijay Kumar Sinha, the leader of opposition in Bihar Assembly, is another leader of BJP who is consolidating his position in Bihar BJP. He was earlier the Speaker of Bihar Vidhan Sabha during the NDA government.
The real test of Vijay Kumar Sinha is to perform in the Lok Sabha elections. He is an MLA from the Lakhisarai Assembly constituency, which comes under the Munger Lok Sabha constituency where Lalan Singh, the national president of JD-U, is the sitting MP.
Hence, it would be a litmus test for Vijay Kumar Sinha to perform well. Sinha claims that the next Chief Minister will come from an RSS background.
Rajiv Pratap Rudy, the former Union Minister and MP from Saran, is active these days in Bihar and is claiming that he is the only leader who is capable of removing poverty from the state.
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