Ending Bihar suspense, Modi endorses Nitish as CM face, slams RJD’s jungle raj

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday framed the Bihar election battle as a fight between the “NDA’s good governance” and the “RJD’s jungle raj”, endorsing Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the face of the ruling dispensation.

A day after the opposition INDIA bloc named RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav as its CM face, Modi, launching his Bihar poll campaign from Samastipur, the ancestral land of socialist icon and late CM Karpoori Thakur, endorsed Nitish as the leader of the NDA coalition. “This time, under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, the NDA is going to break all past records of victory,” said PM Modi, in his first public remarks backing Nitish as the alliance face.

With these remarks, Modi put to rest all suspense around the future role of Nitish, even recalling the beginnings of the BJP-JD(U) pact in Bihar, which ended Lalu Prasad-led RJD’s 15-year rule in the state in 2005. At that time, the BJP under LK Advani, the party president, backed Nitish for CM-ship disregarding late Samata Party stalwart George Fernandes’ recommendation—Digvijay Singh, who had served as a minister in the AB Vajpayee government from 1998 to 2004.

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“It was October 2005 when Bihar was liberated from ‘jungle raj’ and the state began to witness the NDA’s good governance under Nitish Kumar’s leadership. But at that time, the Congress and the RJD were in government at the Centre and for years, they posed hurdles in the path of Nitish. The Congress-RJD government left no stone unturned to harm the interests of Bihar in their urge to avenge the RJD’s 2005 defeat,” Modi said in the presence of Nitish, who beamed from the dais seated alongside Karpoori Thakur’s son Ramnath Thakur.

The PM’s choice of Samastipur to launch the Bihar campaign was also deliberate with the NDA alliance pitching itself as “pro-poor” and as the “actual inheritor” of the legacy of former socialist CM Karpoori Thakur, who championed the cause of OBC reservation in the state.

“Hum jaise pichhdey aur gareeb parivaron se nikle log is manch pe khade hain (Backward people like me, Nitish ji, Ramnath Thakur ji are all standing on this dais today because of the pro-poor policies of Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur),” Modi said, projecting his own and Nitish’s OBC background and mentioning that the NDA government conferred Bharat Ratna on Karpoori Thakur last year.

Modi also unveiled poll campaign slogans—"Phir ek baar Sushasan sarkar” and “Nai raftaar se chalega Bihar, Jab phir aayegi NDA sarkar”.

In swipes at the RJD, he said, “Jungle raj waalon ko door rakhega Bihar (Bihar will keep the promoters of jungle raj at bay”.

The PM also attacked the RJD and Congress for corruption and said leaders of both parties were “out on bail in multi-crore scam cases”. In a veiled dig at Rahul Gandhi, whom Congress leaders call “Jananayak”, Modi (in Samastipur and later Begusarai) said, “Now these people are stealing titles. Bihar will not tolerate this insult of Jananayak Karpoori Thakur.”

He cited the “pro-incumbency mandates for the NDA and the BJP” in Maharashtra, Haryana, Gujarat, UP and Uttarakhand and said Bihar would follow the same pattern. “We will win the largest ever mandate in Bihar this time,” said the PM. Bihar will vote in two phases on November 6 and 11. The results will be out on November 14.