Patna: In a bid to fine tune its strategy and prepare for the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders will meet in Patna on Sunday. The meeting will be held at Bihar Legislative Council member Sushil Modi's residence.
All BJP MPs and MLAs from Bihar will attend the meeting. BJP's Bihar in-charge Bhupendra Yadav will also be present at the meeting which comes 11 days after the party held a rally at Patna's Gandhi Maidan and sounded the poll bugle.
BJP President Amit Shah and several other top party leaders addressed the rally held on April 14. A day later Shah discussed the political situation in the state in a closed door meeting with senior party leaders.
Besides, Shah met over 100 BJP leaders and workers at the state guest house where he stayed during his two-day visit to Bihar and sought to instil confidence among them ahead of the Assembly polls, Bihar BJP president Mangal Pandey said.
During a party rally in Patna on Tuesday, Shah claimed the BJP will sweep the Assembly polls to be held later in 2015 with two-thirds majority. He also said the merger of Janata Parivar parties and their collective might will not be enough to prevent rout at the hustings.
In the 2010 Assembly elections BJP had contested the elections in alliance with Janata Dal United. The alliance had routed the opposition to win a landslide three-fourth majority in Bihar, bagging 206 of the 243-Assembly seats.
JDU on its own won 115 seats, while BJP snapped up 91 of the 141 and 102 seats they contested respectively. The RJD and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP had contested the elections together and secured just 25 seats. While RJD won 22, the LJP bagged just three seats.
Communist Party of India and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha won one each while others won 6. The Congress suffered a major electoral setback as it won only 4 seats compared to 9 it held in 2005. The CPI won one seat and Independents emerged victorious at three places.
But a lot has changed since 2010. Once close ally, the BJP and JDU parted ways in 2013 and are now bitter rivals. Similarly Lalu's RJD and Paswan's LJP are not together.
While Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JDU and RJD have merged, the BJP is in alliance with the LJP and Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. The emergence of former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who has been expelled from the JDU and is exploring new options, as a political force will make the 2015 Assembly battle very interesting.
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