Bihar CM to campaign for NDA candidates in Capital

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will come to Delhi to campaign for NDA candidates. The BJP, in its fourth list, gave two seats to the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) and the Chirag Paswan-led LJP(RV). The JD(U) named Shailendra Kumar as its candidate for the Burari constituency, while LJP(RV) announced Deepak Tanwar as its candidate from Deoli.

This time, the JD(U) wanted to contest on three seats. The BJP’s Delhi unit initially refused to allocate seats to the JD(U) for the upcoming Assembly elections. In 2020, the JD(U) got two seats to contest in Delhi - Sangam Vihar and Burari. The party lost both seats to AAP.

However, the BJP agreed to accommodate the JD(U) since the NDA will contest the state elections later this year in Bihar.

“It does not matter how many seats the party contests from. We (NDA) agreed to defeat the AAP together. Now that the seat-sharing deal has been reached, we are hitting the ground with full strength,” JD(U) spokesperson Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said.

Purvanchalis are people from eastern UP and western Bihar. They account for around 44 per cent of Delhi’s population. So, they play a crucial role in the elections.

JD(U) leader KC Tyagi and JD(U) MPs Sanjay Jha and Devesh Chandra Thakur are in the list of star campaigners of the party who will come to the national capital ahead of the elections.

“We are a NDA constituent and the Bihar model will be a part of the electoral discourse, as to how the alliance has developed the state. Wherever it has been in power, the NDA has ushered in development,” Prasad said.

Burari, which is a Purvanchali-dominated Assembly constituency, has several illegal colonies and is often discussed by Delhi residents for infrastructural woes, crime, bad roads and lack of water and sewerage system. Of the 4,20,257 voters, 1,91,426 are females, 2,28,702 males and 29 others in the Burari constituency.