PATNA: BJP national president Amit Shah on Thursday said the NDA would enter the 2020 Assembly polls with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as a leader. The statement coming at a time termed ‘difficult’ by ally Janata Dal (United), stilled several controversies stoked up by BJP and JD(U) leaders in the past one month.
Shah clarified, “Gathbandhan Atal hai” (The alliance is imperishable) in an interface with a news channel, which the JD-U chose to play up at a joint NDA rally at Shivajinagar in Samastipur, where a by-poll to the Samastipur Lok Sabha seat is to be held on October 21.
JD(U) leaders admitted having been riled by statements of BJP leaders-publicly apportioning all blame to JD(U) for the devastating flooding of Patna recently. Matters had deteriorated to such an extent that many had predicted an imminent break. However, Kumar on Wednesday said, the JD(U) alliance with NDA was a sealed thing and will not collapse out of external pressure.
The joint Samastipur election campaign was also designed to publicly refute the idea of a split in NDA, where JD(U) and BJP leaders joined Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP to campaign for his late parliamentarian brother Ram Chandra Ram’s son Prince Kumar.