“There are no complaints within the grand alliance over the names of candidates and seat adjustments”, he said.
Advertisement
Similarly, the grand alliance has focused on its old narrative of bringing together the Muslims and Yadavs under the Lalu Prasad-led RJD and the Mahadalits under Kumar’s JD(U).
It was also seen that a number of JD(U) and RJD candidates have been “adjusted” in the Congress list.
Out of this, 48 Yadav nominees would contest on RJD symbol while the JD (U) and the Congress have fielded 14 and two candidates respectively.
Nitish Kumar has made it clear that development was the main agenda for the polls while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was only interested in creating divisions on the basis of religion and caste.
The reports further claimed that the list 242 candidate announce by the Bihar’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar certainly shows a grand alliance that would be focusing on giving more priority to OBCs, Dalits and Muslims.
The list released by party general secretary Madhusudan Mistry contains 10 Muslim candidates.
The Chief Minister, who has aligned with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to stop the NDA from making inroads in Bihar, said that if the BJP was so mad about the cancellation of the dinner, why it was raking the issue now instead of breaking ties with the JD-U in 2010.
Another set of BJP activists from Karakat constituency staged a protest at the same venue to express their displeasure over the denial of ticket to their leader.
Kumar and other leaders were present in the party office while slogan shouting was going on outside the gate.
The BJP, LJP, RLSP combine won 31 Lok Sabha seats out of 40.
The announcement of seats has also triggered heartburn among those who have been denied ticket.
“For past over one-and-a-half year I am running government with the help of RJD and Congress and never got any recommendation to set free any criminal”, he said in support.
The JDU received another blow though with health minister Ramdhani Singh quitting the party on not being named among the candidates. At last count, the BJP has fielded 36 Yadavs – out of 154 seats – to counter Lalu’s core vote-bank; at 42%, the BJP continues to give the upper castes a disproportionately high representation.
Tejaswi Yadav, a cricketer-turned-politician, is a popular face of the party.
Advertisement
Kumar, during his televised interview, also denied having taken the decision to cancel the much-publicized dinner with the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in 2010 saying it was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Kumar Modi who had asked him to cancel the dinner.
