NEW DELHI: With Bihar Assembly elections likely to become a litmus test for the BJP, party president Amit Shah has asked MPs from the state to launch a mass contact programme to reach out to the people.
Shah had called a meeting of the senior leaders and MPs from the state to discuss the strategy for the upcoming Assembly elections likely to be held in November.
He is learnt to have asked the MPs to cover four or five villages every day and touch a figure of 400 villages so that people at the grassroots become aware of the progressive measures initiated by the government.
“We mainly deliberated on the mass contact programme to spread the good work being done by Narendra Modi Government and to expose the unholy alliance between Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (JD(U), Lalu Prasad (RJD) and the Congress,” senior BJP leader and former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi told reporters after the meeting.
Bihar is likely to witness a close contest as Nitish has joined hands with Lalu to counter the BJP. Though, the BJP leaders feel that the caste calculus favours the Nitish-Lalu combine, the party through its mass reach out programme would be able to do well.
The contact programme will start from May 25 and each of the BJP MPs are expected to visit 400 villages, Sushil Modi said, adding that the party will also verify the details of its new members. Union Ministers from the state, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, and Giriraj Singh also attended the meeting.
The BJP is also looking at an alliance with former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi ahead of the polls. But sources said Manjhi was weighing his chances of contesting the polls alone, and join hands with the BJP post- elections. “We have not received any proposal from them so far. We have an existing alliance and it could well be expanded,” Sushil Modi said reacting to reports of Manjhi joining the alliance.