The Hindu : National : BJP changes strategy for Bihar

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 11, 2005

National

National

BJP changes strategy for Bihar

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, FEB. 10. In the midst of the second phase of the intense election battle being fought in Bihar, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally, the Janata Dal (United), have decided to change strategy by announcing that JD(U) leader, Nitish Kumar, was its chief ministerial candidate.

Till now the alliance has been saying that it was keeping the hot job for the Lok Janshakti Party leader, Ram Vilas Paswan, even though he was not part of their alliance but had an electoral arrangement with the Congress.

The BJP's calculation has changed somewhat since the election process started. While within the BJP-JD(U) alliance Mr. Kumar has always been the undisputed choice for the chief minister's position — he was in fact installed as Chief Minister in 2000 but could not muster a majority — it was felt that it would be impossible for the alliance to get together a majority without Mr. Paswan's help. Having failed to get Mr. Paswan to join hands with it in a pre-poll alliance, both the BJP and JD(U) leaders, including Mr. Kumar himself, had repeatedly stated till two days ago that the alliance would have no hesitation in offering Mr. Paswan the Chief Minister's chair in the scenario after the election results came in.

Shift in Muslim votes

However, recently party leaders have felt that the "confusion'' was not helping the BJP. Some of our voters felt that a vote for Mr. Paswan was a vote for us. We wanted to clarify that this was not the case,'' one party leader said. Another view in the party was that after the first phase of polling the BJP-JD(U) alliance was feeling more confident. There was evidence of a shift in the Muslim vote away from the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the overall confusion between the so-called United Progressive Alliance partners would also help the Opposition. "In this situation we wanted to end the confusion on our side. All who matter have been consulted and a decision was taken that Mr. Kumar should be projected as the chief ministerial candidate,'' party vice-president, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said today commenting on the announcement made by party president, L.K. Advani, in Jharkhand where he has gone for an election campaign.

Party leaders are convinced that this will give them several advantages. One, the people will see a definite alternative to the Rabri Devi Government; two, the BJP-JD(U) will be seen as the Opposition, which is not flirting with those in other camps; three, the alliance expects the consolidation of the non-Yadav backward caste vote behind it as Mr. Kumar is their leader; and four, it will give a signal that the BJP-JD(U) is very much in the race and is no longer depending on others to get its post election arithmetic right.

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