Sonia likely to kick off campaign
PATNA: AICC president Sonia Gandhi is expected to kick off party's election campaign in Bihar from Gandhi Maidan here. The party has pressed into service all its Morchas and cells to make the rally a historic one.
Though the final dates are yet to be decided, she is likely to visit Patna between August 23 and 25. "After over a decade, the Congress is holding its rally at Gandhi Maidan," said state Congress leader and media in-charge Premchand Mishra.
Union minister and Bihar affairs in-charge Mukul Wasnik, who arrived here on Saturday, visited Gandhi Maidan which the party has booked from August 21 to 25.
The state leaders have plunged into the preparation for the rally and all the district chiefs have been directed to mobilize public support and bring them here. State Congress chief Mehboob Ali Qaiser and CLP leader Ashok Kumar will also tour across the state prior to the rally.
There is speculation that some rebel leaders of the JD(U) and RJD will formally join the Congress in Sonia's presence. The names being discussed in the political circles include that of former state JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lalan, who is also MP from Munger, JD(U) MLC Shambhu Saran Srivastava and former Union minister and RJD leader Devendra Prasad Yadav.
The Congress leaders are, however, not very sure about these joinings. "We know several leaders from other parties are keen to join the Congress, but the party leadership is not in a haste to get them in," said Mishra. He added that after the assembly elections there might be a new equation in the state and the regional parties will not be in a strong position here.
Author: TNN
Source: The Times Of India
Showing posts with label Bihar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bihar. Show all posts
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
JD-U in catch-22 over Lallan
JD-U in catch-22 over Lallan
Caught in a classic catch-22 situation, the JD(U) is searching for answers to deal with party heavyweight and Lok Sabha MP Rajiv Ranjan (Lallan) Singh, who is working behind the doors to provide much needed oxygen to the Congress in Bihar. Further testing nerves of the JD(U), Mr Singh has dared the party to take action against him
and has even made his intent clear to appear on the dais when Congress president Sonia Gandhi visits Bihar. Though acknowledging the fact that Mr Singh has become a loose canon and is spearheading attacks on Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) leadership does not want to expel him on two counts, as it will allow him to continue as a Lok Sabha member and secondly the party does not want to gift the Congress a formidable upper caste leader.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Singh revealed that he asked JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav “when would he be expelled” to which he got an answer in negative. “We will not expel you,” Mr Yadav reportedly told Mr Singh. “I am going to share the dais with Mrs Gandhi when she visits Bihar. What will you do then,” Mr Singh reportedly asked Mr Yadav to which he was told that the party would take a call on the matter at that time only.
Representing the Munghyr Lok Sabha seat from Bihar, Mr Singh hails from the land-owning Bhumihar caste, which is up in arms against Mr Nitish Kumar, for having attempted to implement a scheme, which indirectly gives rights to share-croppers (bataidaars) on the land they till. He was also a close confidante of Mr Kumar till he quit the party posts.
Sounding bullish on prospects of the Congress in Bihar, Mr Singh said that the upper caste has conviction that if Mr Kumar returns to power he would implement the “Bataidaairi scheme”. “Nitish has lost the crowd. He has divided castes in the state. People are looking for an alternative and the Congress stands a chance to emerge as the single largest party in the state,” Mr Singh told this newspaper.
Further substantiating his claims, Mr Singh stated that the Congress could weave around an equation of upper castes, Muslims and dalits, which would be an effective foil to vote base of either the JD (U)-BJP combine or RJD-LJP alliance.
Author: Manish Anand
Source: The Asian Age
Caught in a classic catch-22 situation, the JD(U) is searching for answers to deal with party heavyweight and Lok Sabha MP Rajiv Ranjan (Lallan) Singh, who is working behind the doors to provide much needed oxygen to the Congress in Bihar. Further testing nerves of the JD(U), Mr Singh has dared the party to take action against him
and has even made his intent clear to appear on the dais when Congress president Sonia Gandhi visits Bihar. Though acknowledging the fact that Mr Singh has become a loose canon and is spearheading attacks on Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) leadership does not want to expel him on two counts, as it will allow him to continue as a Lok Sabha member and secondly the party does not want to gift the Congress a formidable upper caste leader.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Singh revealed that he asked JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav “when would he be expelled” to which he got an answer in negative. “We will not expel you,” Mr Yadav reportedly told Mr Singh. “I am going to share the dais with Mrs Gandhi when she visits Bihar. What will you do then,” Mr Singh reportedly asked Mr Yadav to which he was told that the party would take a call on the matter at that time only.
Representing the Munghyr Lok Sabha seat from Bihar, Mr Singh hails from the land-owning Bhumihar caste, which is up in arms against Mr Nitish Kumar, for having attempted to implement a scheme, which indirectly gives rights to share-croppers (bataidaars) on the land they till. He was also a close confidante of Mr Kumar till he quit the party posts.
Sounding bullish on prospects of the Congress in Bihar, Mr Singh said that the upper caste has conviction that if Mr Kumar returns to power he would implement the “Bataidaairi scheme”. “Nitish has lost the crowd. He has divided castes in the state. People are looking for an alternative and the Congress stands a chance to emerge as the single largest party in the state,” Mr Singh told this newspaper.
Further substantiating his claims, Mr Singh stated that the Congress could weave around an equation of upper castes, Muslims and dalits, which would be an effective foil to vote base of either the JD (U)-BJP combine or RJD-LJP alliance.
Author: Manish Anand
Source: The Asian Age
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Rahul vs NaMo in Bihar
Rahul vs NaMo in Bihar
Every sixth Bihari is a Muslim. (On the other hand, every eighth Indian is a Muslim according to the 2001 census, though some in the community argue that it is closer to every seventh Indian. In any case, ten per cent of India’s Muslims are in Bihar.) The Bihar Assembly polls will take place in around three months, and as always, whoever has the best caste/community combination will win. Incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tried to split the Muslim vote by attacking his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi over a minor matter of newspaper ads during the BJP meet in Patna last month. It apparently backfired. The Muslims are now doubly suspicious of Nitish despite his not-inconsiderable achievements of fast-tracking development and improving security; and the upper castes do not look as if they will transfer their votes from the BJP to the JD(U) in constituencies where the latter will fight. Lalu Prasad has gained. After a year of silently suffering the cavalier treatment by his senior UPA partner, he can afford himself a smile. He now has the edge in Bihar.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Congress party which, like Rip Van Winkle, hopes to electorally wake up in Bihar after 20 long years. It is repeatedly said that the Congress cannot ever hope for a parliamentary majority unless it gets substantial numbers of MPs from the Hindi heartland states of UP (80 Lok Sabha seats) and Bihar (40). Bihar, due to Lalu’s dominance for most of the past two decades, seemed a much tougher nut to crack than UP. Rahul Gandhi’s surprising performance in UP in last year’s Lok Sabha elections appears to have given the Congress a ray of hope.
Given the Muslim voter’s importance in the Congress’ traditional electoral strategy, the party not surprisingly last month appointed a relatively young, fresh face as its party chief: Mehboob Ali Kaiser. And then, seeing how Nitish fell flat on his face trying to confuse Muslims by demonising their enemy no. 1, Narendra Modi, the Congress has decided to do one better, and this is perhaps why it aggressively moved the Central Bureau of Investigation against his close associate and Gujarat minister of state for home, Amit Shah. If the CBI summoned Shah, do not assume this is a logical consequence of the investigation of the encounter killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, which has already led to the arrest of an IPS officer (Gujarat claims Sohrabuddin had terrorist links, much like Dawood Ibrahim). If the CBI acted methodically, Ottavio Quattrocchi would be singing arias in Tihar jail. And saying the investigation was ordered by the Supreme Court is besides the fact; the ruling party can turn up or lower the pressure in CBI cases whenever it chooses. The summons is simply intended to show Bihar’s Muslims that the Congress is their enemy’s enemy; so the Congress deserves their votes.
You may wonder whether this strategy is any good, and the best clue is in how Lalu behaves. His core combination of the Yadavs and Muslims in Bihar has been impregnable; you could argue that hubris is what defeated him in the last Assembly elections. His voter-coalition has survived longer than Mulayam Singh’s in UP because unlike Mulayam, Lalu never betrayed his voters by getting into bed with Kalyan Singh, the man who oversaw the 1992 demolition in Ayodhya. If he feels even slightly unsettled by other politicians’ outreach to Muslims, he will react. The fact that he has not and that after a long year in sulk he finally allows himself an occasional smile should tell you how good the Congress’ strategy is.
There are also rumours that the Congress may try to woo back its traditional Dalit voters by announcing that its chief ministerial candidate will be Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. (She can safely be a candidate because the likelihood of the Congress taking the lead in forming a government is remote.) Though she is the late Jagjivan Ram’s daughter and also India’s first woman Speaker, these are credentials that impress only middle-class newspaper readers, not rural Dalits. More importantly, Ram Vilas Paswan is well-entrenched as Bihar’s Dalit leader. This rumour will thus remain a fanciful notion.
The only sure hope for the Congress party is Rahul Gandhi. Indeed, with Nitish scoring a self-goal by bickering with his alliance partner, and with Lalu not participating in the central government (a source of patronage for party workers and constituents), you would think this is the best window of opportunity that Rahul and his party have in Bihar. Strangely, the princeling has of late kept a low profile.
Perhaps it has to do with his 40th birthday last month, when the youth icon holidayed abroad to celebrate his metamorphosis into a middle-aged man. Around that time, The Economist wrote a damaging piece about Rahul and the fact that no one knew about this future prime minister’s policy on anything (although many have guessed that Rahul believes Union home minister P Chidambaram to be “intellectually arrogant”, as Digvijay Singh put it). Rahul’s beliefs are so secret that you would need Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Inception to enter his dream and dig them out. And since then, Rahul has not stirred from Delhi, preferring to meet party colleagues from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu at his home. (It is not known if he accompanied his brother-in-law Robert Vadra to South Africa to watch the World Cup final that was won by Spain, a country that apparently has emotional significance for Rahul.)
Rahul has promised to visit Bihar in late August; his mother will be addressing a rally at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan a month from now. Somehow that does not seem to measure up to the kind of effort he put into UP where he did the occasional sleep-over at Dalit homes. This is a chance for Rahul to show that his party is on the comeback trail; selecting fresh candidates will help pick up a bunch of seats; and the time to do so is now. If Rahul is just going to attend a couple of functions here and there, the equally returns will be equally meagre.
And if that’s the case, then the contest will be simply Nitish versus Lalu. With three months to go, Nitish has enough time to make up lost ground. In which case, the results will show that Bihar was not just Nitish’s win, but Rahul’s loss. Rahul may try and chalk it up as one of those losses like Gujarat and UP in 2007 that did not matter in the long run. But if the voters see it differently, then the princeling’s plan to become prime minister (and one unfettered by coalition allies) will, to refer back to Inception, remain a dream-within-a-dream.
Author: Aditya Sinha
Source: New Indian Express
Every sixth Bihari is a Muslim. (On the other hand, every eighth Indian is a Muslim according to the 2001 census, though some in the community argue that it is closer to every seventh Indian. In any case, ten per cent of India’s Muslims are in Bihar.) The Bihar Assembly polls will take place in around three months, and as always, whoever has the best caste/community combination will win. Incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tried to split the Muslim vote by attacking his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi over a minor matter of newspaper ads during the BJP meet in Patna last month. It apparently backfired. The Muslims are now doubly suspicious of Nitish despite his not-inconsiderable achievements of fast-tracking development and improving security; and the upper castes do not look as if they will transfer their votes from the BJP to the JD(U) in constituencies where the latter will fight. Lalu Prasad has gained. After a year of silently suffering the cavalier treatment by his senior UPA partner, he can afford himself a smile. He now has the edge in Bihar.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Congress party which, like Rip Van Winkle, hopes to electorally wake up in Bihar after 20 long years. It is repeatedly said that the Congress cannot ever hope for a parliamentary majority unless it gets substantial numbers of MPs from the Hindi heartland states of UP (80 Lok Sabha seats) and Bihar (40). Bihar, due to Lalu’s dominance for most of the past two decades, seemed a much tougher nut to crack than UP. Rahul Gandhi’s surprising performance in UP in last year’s Lok Sabha elections appears to have given the Congress a ray of hope.
Given the Muslim voter’s importance in the Congress’ traditional electoral strategy, the party not surprisingly last month appointed a relatively young, fresh face as its party chief: Mehboob Ali Kaiser. And then, seeing how Nitish fell flat on his face trying to confuse Muslims by demonising their enemy no. 1, Narendra Modi, the Congress has decided to do one better, and this is perhaps why it aggressively moved the Central Bureau of Investigation against his close associate and Gujarat minister of state for home, Amit Shah. If the CBI summoned Shah, do not assume this is a logical consequence of the investigation of the encounter killing of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh, which has already led to the arrest of an IPS officer (Gujarat claims Sohrabuddin had terrorist links, much like Dawood Ibrahim). If the CBI acted methodically, Ottavio Quattrocchi would be singing arias in Tihar jail. And saying the investigation was ordered by the Supreme Court is besides the fact; the ruling party can turn up or lower the pressure in CBI cases whenever it chooses. The summons is simply intended to show Bihar’s Muslims that the Congress is their enemy’s enemy; so the Congress deserves their votes.
You may wonder whether this strategy is any good, and the best clue is in how Lalu behaves. His core combination of the Yadavs and Muslims in Bihar has been impregnable; you could argue that hubris is what defeated him in the last Assembly elections. His voter-coalition has survived longer than Mulayam Singh’s in UP because unlike Mulayam, Lalu never betrayed his voters by getting into bed with Kalyan Singh, the man who oversaw the 1992 demolition in Ayodhya. If he feels even slightly unsettled by other politicians’ outreach to Muslims, he will react. The fact that he has not and that after a long year in sulk he finally allows himself an occasional smile should tell you how good the Congress’ strategy is.
There are also rumours that the Congress may try to woo back its traditional Dalit voters by announcing that its chief ministerial candidate will be Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. (She can safely be a candidate because the likelihood of the Congress taking the lead in forming a government is remote.) Though she is the late Jagjivan Ram’s daughter and also India’s first woman Speaker, these are credentials that impress only middle-class newspaper readers, not rural Dalits. More importantly, Ram Vilas Paswan is well-entrenched as Bihar’s Dalit leader. This rumour will thus remain a fanciful notion.
The only sure hope for the Congress party is Rahul Gandhi. Indeed, with Nitish scoring a self-goal by bickering with his alliance partner, and with Lalu not participating in the central government (a source of patronage for party workers and constituents), you would think this is the best window of opportunity that Rahul and his party have in Bihar. Strangely, the princeling has of late kept a low profile.
Perhaps it has to do with his 40th birthday last month, when the youth icon holidayed abroad to celebrate his metamorphosis into a middle-aged man. Around that time, The Economist wrote a damaging piece about Rahul and the fact that no one knew about this future prime minister’s policy on anything (although many have guessed that Rahul believes Union home minister P Chidambaram to be “intellectually arrogant”, as Digvijay Singh put it). Rahul’s beliefs are so secret that you would need Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Inception to enter his dream and dig them out. And since then, Rahul has not stirred from Delhi, preferring to meet party colleagues from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu at his home. (It is not known if he accompanied his brother-in-law Robert Vadra to South Africa to watch the World Cup final that was won by Spain, a country that apparently has emotional significance for Rahul.)
Rahul has promised to visit Bihar in late August; his mother will be addressing a rally at Patna’s Gandhi Maidan a month from now. Somehow that does not seem to measure up to the kind of effort he put into UP where he did the occasional sleep-over at Dalit homes. This is a chance for Rahul to show that his party is on the comeback trail; selecting fresh candidates will help pick up a bunch of seats; and the time to do so is now. If Rahul is just going to attend a couple of functions here and there, the equally returns will be equally meagre.
And if that’s the case, then the contest will be simply Nitish versus Lalu. With three months to go, Nitish has enough time to make up lost ground. In which case, the results will show that Bihar was not just Nitish’s win, but Rahul’s loss. Rahul may try and chalk it up as one of those losses like Gujarat and UP in 2007 that did not matter in the long run. But if the voters see it differently, then the princeling’s plan to become prime minister (and one unfettered by coalition allies) will, to refer back to Inception, remain a dream-within-a-dream.
Author: Aditya Sinha
Source: New Indian Express
Congress gearing up for Bihar polls
Congress gearing up for Bihar polls
NEW DELHI: While its government faces the Opposition heat in Parliament, the Congress seems to be preoccupied with the coming Bihar Assembly polls slated to take place between October and November this year.
Up against formidable forces - high-on-performance Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his predecessor desperate Lalu Prasad bent on retrieving his throne - the Congress is leaving no stones unturned to break into Bihar’s caste conundrum.
Once the ruling party in the state, the Congress is now a marginal presence. It managed to win only nine Assembly and two parliamentary seats in the last two Assembly elections.
But with the ‘young’ general secretary Rahul Gandhi keen on reviving the party’s fortune in the Hindi heartland ‘any which way’, the Congress party is putting its best foot forward to break even in a terrain which has nearly be come alien to its political culture.Realising that it can do little other than vigorously woo the minority voters in the state, the party has sent almost all its Muslim leaders to prepare the ground for Rahul’s road shows that are likely to take place in the second half of August.
One of the party leaders back from camping in Patna for three weeks, however, did not seem too optimistic.
“The general secretary will go, when the need arises and the ground is ready,” he said. In other words, if the going is better than what the party expects, the Rahul-card will be played, not otherwise. The party’s ‘youth icon’, after all, cannot be possibly be exposed to a flop show.
The Congress admittedly has only two options in Bihar to woe the minority community through promises of more Central Government-backed welfare schemes and impress the Dalits by tacitly projecting Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.
On the first count, being a late-comer in the election scenario it has to match Bihar Chief Minister’s five years of assiduous wooing of the minority community. Kumar’s record is especially tough to match as he has managed to cosy up to the community despite the BJP being part of his government.
The Congress has also come to realise that the RJD chief Lalu’s once-invincible M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) factor is not entirely broken. The other vote bank which the Congress can hope to tap the upper caste is still largely with the BJP.
The Congress only hope is Nitish Kumar. That he would do a ‘Naveen Patnaik on the BJP’. The Congress game plan, therefore, is to make it really tough for Nitish to continue his alliance with the saffron party. And, for this, Gujarat has to play itself out in Bihar.
Author: Santwana Bhattacharya
Source: New Indian Express
NEW DELHI: While its government faces the Opposition heat in Parliament, the Congress seems to be preoccupied with the coming Bihar Assembly polls slated to take place between October and November this year.
Up against formidable forces - high-on-performance Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his predecessor desperate Lalu Prasad bent on retrieving his throne - the Congress is leaving no stones unturned to break into Bihar’s caste conundrum.
Once the ruling party in the state, the Congress is now a marginal presence. It managed to win only nine Assembly and two parliamentary seats in the last two Assembly elections.
But with the ‘young’ general secretary Rahul Gandhi keen on reviving the party’s fortune in the Hindi heartland ‘any which way’, the Congress party is putting its best foot forward to break even in a terrain which has nearly be come alien to its political culture.Realising that it can do little other than vigorously woo the minority voters in the state, the party has sent almost all its Muslim leaders to prepare the ground for Rahul’s road shows that are likely to take place in the second half of August.
One of the party leaders back from camping in Patna for three weeks, however, did not seem too optimistic.
“The general secretary will go, when the need arises and the ground is ready,” he said. In other words, if the going is better than what the party expects, the Rahul-card will be played, not otherwise. The party’s ‘youth icon’, after all, cannot be possibly be exposed to a flop show.
The Congress admittedly has only two options in Bihar to woe the minority community through promises of more Central Government-backed welfare schemes and impress the Dalits by tacitly projecting Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.
On the first count, being a late-comer in the election scenario it has to match Bihar Chief Minister’s five years of assiduous wooing of the minority community. Kumar’s record is especially tough to match as he has managed to cosy up to the community despite the BJP being part of his government.
The Congress has also come to realise that the RJD chief Lalu’s once-invincible M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) factor is not entirely broken. The other vote bank which the Congress can hope to tap the upper caste is still largely with the BJP.
The Congress only hope is Nitish Kumar. That he would do a ‘Naveen Patnaik on the BJP’. The Congress game plan, therefore, is to make it really tough for Nitish to continue his alliance with the saffron party. And, for this, Gujarat has to play itself out in Bihar.
Author: Santwana Bhattacharya
Source: New Indian Express
Lallan Singh to join hands with Congress
Lallan Singh to join hands with Congress
NEW DELHI: In a development which gives Congress hopes of revival in Bihar, one more local political heavyweight is pitching his tent in its camp.
The man who led the open revolt against Nitish Kumar from within, former JD(U) state president and Lok Sabha member Rajiv Ranjan, alias, Lallan Singh, has decided to join hands with Congress in the upcoming Bihar assembly polls. Mr Singh, a prominent Bhumihaar leader and a one-time Nitish Kumar confidant, had quit the top JD(U) post after accusing the CM of being dictatorial. Mr Singh told ET that he would “go all out with Congress and share the campaign platform” in its fight against the JD(U)-BJP regime”. Asked about his continuance as a JD(U) MP, Mr Singh said: “People of Munghyr have elected me to the Lok Sabha. I have decided to openly join hands with Congress in the assembly elections as per the people’s aspirations for a new beginning in Bihar. Why should I quit the Lok Sabha? I have my plans. Let JD(U) leadership do whatever it wants.” AICC sources said Mr Singh has been in touch with Congress leaders and modalities of their relations were being worked out. MR Singh confirmed his talks with Congress leadership. Congress sources hinted at more leaders coming along with Mr Singh but he just said “just wait and see.” Justifying his move, Mr Singh said: “After Bihar’s 20 years’ disastrous experiments with regional parties, it is time a national party provides a positive direction for the state. Congress is that natural alternative in Bihar. And for me the only political option now is to join hands with Congress as people like me will never join BJP, RJD or LJP. It is time to reestablish Congress firmly in Bihar.” In a reference to the unrest in a section of Bihar’s pro-JD(U)-BJP upper caste support base since Nitish Kumar started nurturing Extreme Backward Castes, non-Paswan ‘Maha Dalit’ block and Backward Muslims and displayed the tenancy plank (batedari Bill), Mr Singh said: “Regional parties and its leaders, be it Nitish Kumar or Lalu Prasad, thrive by creating social tension. Lalu created the backward-forward divide. Now Nitish Kumar, apart from running an inefficient and corrupt government, has created the same social tension in the name of `Batedari’ and other things”. Bihar has to break off caste-politics and needs a national party like Congress with its inclusive agenda. In any case, all discredited and rejected RJD leaders are now part of JD(U) and are advising Nitish Kumar just the way they had guided Lalu in the past.” The state Congress is trying to rebound like it did in UP by wooing back Muslims, who are no longer a captive vote-bank for Lalu Prasad, and unhappy ‘upper caste’ population along with other floating social segments. Congress is planning a state-wide campaign from mid-August. Former JD(U) minister Jamshed Asraf, NCP and JD(S) state presidents Aquil Haider and Shram Kumar Chowdhury and some others joined Congress last week. |
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Source: The Economics Times
Cong gears up to take on NDA
Cong gears up to take on NDA
PATNA: If the NDA has decided to train its guns on the UPA-II led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during electioneering in the coming assembly elections in Bihar, the Congress, as it appears, is unlikely to take the flak lying down. The latter, in fact, has decided to take on the NDA with a vengeance.For an indication of the same, the state Congress's Manifesto Committee held its meeting here at the party headquarters at Sadaqat Ashram on Wednesdaya and arrived at a consensus regarding the draft manifesto, besides its content and thrust.
As it is, the party would build its turf and pitch around the quantum of developmental money that the UPA-II has pumped into the state, on the one hand. On the other, it would also point to the misutilization of the funds and irregularities indulged in during the implementation phase, indicating that the money sent did not reach the target groups. That apart, the state Congress would also mention the fronts on which the Nitish Kumar government had failed.
The committee held its meeting under chairmanship of former Union minister and senior party leader L P Shahi. Other participants included former minister Baleshwar Ram, former working president of Bihar legislative council Arun Kumar, committee convener Ram Updesh Singh, MLC Jyoti and former MP Manorama Singh, said state Congress spokesman Rajesh Kumar Sinha.
According to him, they also expressed their opinions on issues that could be included to pillory the Nitish government. For the same, they discussed various programmes under which the UPA-II had given money to the state for utilization.
While the next meeting of the committee would be held on August 2, the way it is building its poll plank would certainly not be music to the ears of the NDA constituents.
For its sake, the Nitish-led NDA government has built its central thrust around "vikas" (development) achieved in the last four-and-a-half years. Then, to put the UPA-II on the mat, the NDA constituents __ JD(U) and BJP __ first asked for the special category status for Bihar and now decided to make it a poll issue.
However, the state Congress is gearing up to take on the NDA by its horns. Accordingly, state Congress chief Mehboob Ali Qaiser, after inducting into the party the former BJP candidate from Sikta assembly constituency, Prem Sagar Prasad, said the BPCC had already acquired a dynamism under the leadership of AICC president Sonia Gandhi and general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
Author: The Times of India
Congress hopes Rahul’s ‘medicine’ will revive party in Bihar
The Congress, which has been out of power in Bihar for the last two decades, is going all out to shake up its own moribund organisation in the State ahead of the Assembly elections slated for October-November this year.
Having decided bravely that it will contest alone in a State where it has just nine MLAs (in a 240-strong Assembly) and two MPs (out of the 40 in the State), it is now making up for lost time by parachuting a host of Central Ministers and party functionaries, and planning commemorative functions at every district headquarters on August 9 (Quit India Day) as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations.
All these activities, the party hopes, will galvanise workers for the public rally in Patna's historic Gandhi Maidan in August-end, to be addressed by party President Sonia Gandhi.
Not finalised
The Congress, sources said, has not finalised the date, but it has booked the maidan between August 21 to 25. Party general-secretary Rahul Gandhi is also expected to campaign extensively in Bihar, sources said.
For party general-secretary Mukul Wasnik — who was given charge of Bihar in early June, along with Mahboob Ali Qaiser who was appointed Bihar Pradesh Congress chief, thus ending months of slanging match between their predecessors, Jagdish Tytler and Anil Sharma — the last seven weeks have been a period of frenzied activity.
“In areas where the Congress was not taken note of, people are beginning to react,” Mr. Wasnik told TheHindu, adding that “now, even [Chief Minister] Nitish Kumar is beginning to react to us.'
He also stressed that he had told party workers to address the “aspirations of the people at the constituency-level, not make repeated trips to Delhi.” Mr. Wasnik said he hoped that the list of party candidates would be ready by early September. The Screening Committee, headed by general-secretary B.K. Hariprasad, was set up last week.
Apart from activating the party machinery, the Congress' efforts seem to be to focus on Central social welfare schemes, while focussing on corruption in the State, especially as the Patna High Court has recently ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation into alleged financial irregularities, a decision the Bihar government has appealed against. The party hopes that in this way it might be able to dent Mr. Kumar's claims of development and good governance.
Allegations
Mr. Wasnik also stressed that Mr. Kumar's allegations of stepmotherly treatment by the Centre was not borne out by the facts. “Nitishji,” he said, “should tell the people of Bihar that while the NDA [National Democratic Alliance] government at the Centre had made available Rs. 3,000 crore for rural development, the UPA [United Progressive Alliance] government provided Rs. 19,000 crore on this front in the last six years.”
Meanwhile on Sunday, the Bihar unit of the Congress got a lift with the former Excise Minister in the Nitish Kumar government, Jamshed Ashraf, joining the party along with the former Janata Dal (Secular) president and the former head of Nationalist Congress Party's Bihar unit. Mr. Ashraf, who was sacked from the State Cabinet and the party in June for raising the issue of the Rs.500-crore scam in the State Excise Department, said, “Nitish Kumar is vying with Lalu Prasad to break the record of corruption in the State.”
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