The BJP on Saturday displayed its firm ambitions of winning power at the Centre in the 2014 general elections by getting together its top echelon of leaders at a massive rally in Bihar, where the country’s main Opposition party got its richest electoral gains so far in 2010.
While the public ceremony at Patna’s historic Gandhi Maidan, attended by close to 70,000 BJP workers drawn from across Bihar, ostensibly aimed at honouring the party’s dedicated and efficient workers for ensuring victory in the 2010 Assembly polls, the Central UPA government and the recent chain of scams were the target of top BJP leaders.
They slammed the Congress and ridiculed its one-time allies and Bihar spent forces RJD and LJP.
BJP national president Nitin Gadkari, who personally garlanded several BJP workers on the dais, said in his address that Bihar’s voters had shown the nation a new way in politics by rejecting “all corrupt and dynastic parties”.
Dwelling on scams like the 2G spectrum scam and Adarsh Society scam, he sought to portray the BJP and the NDA as the only meaningful alternative to the Congress-led UPA at the Centre.
Mr Gadkari even said the general elections could be held before time due to the current turmoil in the UPA.
Arun Jaitley, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sahha, showered praise on Bihar’s JD(U)-BJP alliance government and said the Central UPA government had failed in controlling the spiralling price rise and spread of Maoist extremism and terrorism.
He said the NDA rule under Atal Behari Vajpayee had none of the scams like those grabbing headlines in recent months.
Ananth Kumar, the BJP’s in-charge of Bihar, took the Congress and the RJD-LJP alliance to task, suggesting that it was time RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav found work in television laughter shows. Other top BJP leaders who addressed the rally included spokesmen Ravishankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and several BJP ministers from the state.
Careful about running a coalition government in Bihar with the JD(U), all leaders mandatorily used chief minister and JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar’s name while speaking of the two parties’ thumping victory in the Assembly polls in October-November 2010 and admiring the progress being made in Bihar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party also used Saturday’s ceremony to assert its newfound might in Bihar.