Even as the RJD and the Congress have stepped up their attacks on the BJP on the issue of communalism and “saffron terrorism,” the BJP leadership in Bihar is ignoring such attacks and focusing on how to convert the public goodwill for its coalition government’s development work into votes.
Returning from a month-long “Jan-Naman Yatra” across the state, the BJP’s Bihar unit president, Dr. C.P. Thakur, is more hopeful about the party’s performance in the October-November Assembly polls than that in 2005.
“There is tremendous goodwill among the people for the BJP due to the good work done by our coalition government. We are concentrating our attention on turning this goodwill into votes rather than letting the political attacks by rival parties to be setbacks,” he told this newspaper on Sunday.
“The communalism ghost cannot be resurrected in Bihar no matter how hard the RJD-LJP and the Congress try because the people have already experienced the fruits of a coalition government devoted to the state’s development, said Mr Thakur, strongly objecting to the use of the phrase “saffron terrorists”. He said it would be a “non-issue” in Bihar’s poll campaigns.
The BJP, yet to finalise its ticket distribution, will hold a meeting of it state core committee on Monday.