BJP to dig out Rajiv poll promise

Patna: The BJP is likely to dig out the promise of Rs 5,000-crore special package for Bihar by Rajiv Gandhi ahead of the 1989 general election, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi hinted on Tuesday.

The party’s strategy is to put the Congress and the RJD on the backfoot ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections.

Sushil raised the point of the special package while addressing a programme of BJP functionaries.

Senior BJP leader Sushil maintained that the talks of that package vanished as soon as the Congress lost the 1989 elections. Since then, he added, no Congress leader ever talked about it.

He then spoke in detail how the special package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was being implemented in Bihar. The work had begun even though the BJP did not come to power in the Bihar after the 2015 Assembly elections.

Party insiders on Tuesday revealed that Sushil raised the issue of the old Congress promise before the functionaries intentionally because Congress and RJD leaders keep on asking questions about the special package announced by PM Modi. The party wanted its functionaries not only to share the fact that projects were being implemented under the Prime Minister’s package but also corner the Opposition leaders on what happened to the special package announced by the late Rajiv Gandhi.

“Highlighting our achievements is not the sole thing with which we want to go to the people. Rather, we also want to make people of the state aware of the unfulfilled promises of the Congress,” said the BJP insider.

Ridiculing the BJP’s stance, Congress MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said: “If the BJP was so concerned about the package, why didn’t the party implement it when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in power in the Centre.”

BJP strategists on the other hand are also trying to tell its party functionaries that the RJD’s alliance with the Congress should not be a cause for worry.

The party’s state in-charge, Bhupender Yadav, on Monday spoke at length on how Rahul Gandhi’s proximity with Omar Abdullah in Jammu & Kashmir, Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and some young leaders in Gujarat failed to check the BJP from coming to power, and brought doom for those who developed proximity with the Congress leader.

Without taking names of Tejashwi Yadav, he said that one leader from Bihar met Rahul in Delhi on the day the NDA organised a dinner for its leaders in Patna. He then said there was nothing to worry about. Bhupender clearly hinted that Tejashwi too would meet the same fate like Omar and Akhilesh – being voted out of power.

On Bhupender’s comments on Rahul-Tejashwi bonhomie, RJD MP and party national spokesperson Manoj Jha said: “While the Bihar in-charge for BJP is free to remain in the ‘make-believe’ world of his party’s ‘electoral invincibility’, pragmatism demands that he look at the massive tectonic shift on the political ground in recent months.

“He has no real answer to provide to the people of Bihar in response to the demands of special status or special package and hence goes back to changing the goalposts,” added Jha.

Courtesy: The Telegraph