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Nitish Kumar targets at least 200 seats for NDA in Bihar assembly polls
The JD(U) has 70 members in the 243-member Assembly while the BJP has 54 MLAs .
Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar on Sunday urged his party workers to ensure that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) wins at least 200 seats in the upcoming assembly election in the state.
“Let us resolve to ensure NDA will win more than 200 seats in Bihar assembly polls,” Nitish Kumar said at JD(U) workers’ rally in Patna according to PTI.
The JD (U) and the BJP between them have 124 seats in the 243-member House. The JD(U) has 70 members while the BJP has 54 MLAs in the outgoing assembly.
He took aim at the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for only seeking minority votes.
“RJD and Cong sought votes of minorities, we worked for them,” he said.
The BJP and the JD (U) recently fought the Jharkhand and Delhi assembly elections separately where both fared badly. The two parties had tied up for the first time outside Bihar to fight the Delhi assembly elections. While the BJP won eight of the 67 seats it contested in the 70-member House, Nitish Kumar’s party drew a blank in the two seats that it contested.
The Bihar elections will be an acid test for the two parties after the debacle in Delhi and Jharkhand polls.
In January, Union home minister and then BJP chief Amit Shah said that Nitish Kumar would be the chief ministerial candidate in Bihar and the alliance between his party and the JD U) was “unbreakable”, putting to rest speculation of a rift between the allies over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a proposed all-India National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Last week, Bihar became the first NDA-ruled state to pass a resolution against the NRC which the BJP wants to implement in the country.
