Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Friday unveiled his party’s ambitions for Bihar’s imminent Assembly polls by attacking the state’s JD(U)-BJP government and promising good governance bereft of caste divisions and crime.
Addressing the NCP’s state-level workers’ convention at Patna’s jam-packed Sri Krishna Memorial Hall, Mr Pawar vowed to fight against “garibi, goondagardi, bekari” (poverty, crime and unemployment) in the state, for which he squarely blamed the Nitish Kumar-led-NDA government. “Bihar’s people are looking for a new alternative, a new leadership and new programmes for development, for which the Tariq Anwar-led NCP is committed,” he said.
The NCP has been aggressively preparing for the Assembly polls, scheduled in November, by identifying about 150 of Bihar’s 243 constituencies and organising workers’ meetings in each of the state’s 39 districts in recent months. Leading the party’s electoral foray in Bihar is its national general secretary and Rajya Sabha member Tariq Anwar.
Mr Pawar mounted veiled attacks on the RJD-LJP combine without naming them as he frequently criticised the trend of “caste-based politics,” which has long been the hallmark of the two parties, which are the main Opposition parties in Bihar.
“Outside Bihar, the state is infamous for its backwardness, the criminal links in politics, unemployment and crime figures. But this is not the real picture of Bihar, which showed the nation its way starting from Gandhi’s Champaran movement to JP’s agitation in the 1970s. The NCP wants to show a new way to India from Bihar by ending the state’s many ills,” he said.
Referring to the arrest of Gujarat home minister Amit Shah in the Shohrabddin fake encounter case, Mr Pawar depicted the BJP as a communal party and slammed Nitish Kumar for allying with it. He also referred to Mr Kumar’s pained efforts in June not to be seen with Gujart chief minister Narendra Modi of the BJP. “Bihar’s minorities would never trust such a government (Kumar’s) again,” he said.