“What is required to take over the NDA in Bihar is a grand alliance having LJP, RJD and Congress and I am pressing for that,” Paswan said when asked about his party’s future plans for the upcoming Assembly polls.
Strategists in the Congress party, however, indicated to play a different game plan altogether. A section of Congress feels that it needs to completely marginalize Lalu Prasad if it has to make any inroads in this politically important state.
The Congress party plans to get Ramvilas Paswan led LJP in its fold to get a pie of the Dalit votes. A senior Congress leader in Bihar met Paswan a few days back with a proposal to contest Assembly polls in the state in a Congress-LJP alliance minus RJD, Sources said.
Paswan, however, is not too enthusiastic about Congress’ plan to dump friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Expressing apprehension and citing results of the recently held elections to the Legislative Council, Paswan said, “The ground situation in Bihar is such that any triangular contest will benefit the NDA.”
The ruling NDA had gained absolute majority in the state Legislative Council elections winning 13 of the 22 local authorities seats of the Upper House. Congress lost two seats it earlier held in the council while LJP won three of the six seats it contested this time. RJD could get only two seats.
He repeated his cliche saying, “All secular forces have to fight together to defeat the communal alliance in Bihar.”
“There is need for a realistic approach to make a viable alternative to replace the BJP-JD combine in Bihar,” Paswan said adding that “contesting Lok Sabha election in Bihar separately from Congress was an unfortunate development and lessons should be learnt from it”.
Paswan also charged Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with deliberately trying to divide dalit community for their votes and threatened to launch a state-wide agitation against the alleged “discrimination”.
Paswan announced that a 3-day day national camp of the LJP commencing from August 12 at Bodh Gaya would draw up the poltical agenda of the party for the next two years.
