Bihar elections: BJP ministers given charge for poll campaign

BJP is working to ensure that development is the main election plank amid attempts by RJD chief Lalu Prasad to highlight the issue of reservation.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with BJP Bihar in-charge Ananth Kumar and party senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi releasing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vision document for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections in Patna on Thursday. (Source: PTI Photo)

In its bid to reach out to maximum voters and bring them to booths, BJP has made eight Union ministers in charge of various parts of Bihar while dividing the state in 12 zones to facilitate its campaign.

BJP is also contacting its 65 lakh members with a message from its president Amit Shah as it pulls out all stops to get better of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance in the Assembly polls, seen as a neck and neck fight between the two rival groups by most surveys.

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Union Ministers J P Nadda, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Thavar Chand Gehlot, Radha Mohan Singh, Narendra Singh Tomar, Giriraj Singh and Ram Kripal Yadav have been made election in-charges of various zones of the state under which all 243 assembly constituencies fall.

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Some other party leaders have also joined them in overseeing the entire election apparatus of the party in their respective constituencies, a BJP leader said, sharing details.

He claimed that the party’s membership has risen to 80 lakh following its recent membership drive and 65 lakh of them, whose details are verified, will be told to help it win the crucial elections.

Underscoring the value the party has attached to micromanagent of its campaign, he said Shah is supervising its war room, which is in Patna, works on a regular basis coordinating the state wide campaign.

BJP is working to ensure that development is the main election plank amid attempts by RJD chief Lalu Prasad to highlight the issue of reservation.

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“Agenda is nothing but development. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said without progress in states like Bihar and UP, nation cannot develop,” BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

With Modi returning to campaign with a rally in Banka tomorrow, BJP hopes that he will be able to push the NDA combine ahead of the grand alliance in an election which, Shah had said yesterday, will set the course of national politics.

Modi will address three more rallies on October 8 in Munger, Begusarai and Samastipur besides many more whose schedule is still being finalised, sources said.