George Fernandes, convenor of the National Democratic Alliance and president of the Janata Dal-United, has claimed that the National Democratic Alliance would be able to win a comfortable majority in the forthcoming Bihar assembly elections that would be held in four phases.
Speaking to rediff.com Fernandes said that the task of the BJP and JD-U has been made easy by Governor Buta Singh. "This Buta Singh has made our task relatively easy," Fernandes said with a giggle.
Lalu to seek rescheduling of poll
He would be campaigning for the JD-U and BJP candidates along with other leaders of his party namely Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav along with the top leaders of the BJP. Another factor that would help the NDA candidates is the anger of the people of the state who have been denied the basic rights and development in all spheres of life.
"The people of Bihar are fed up with the misrule of Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and later Buta Singh. They want to get rid of Lalu and his musclemen," he said. George Fernandes, however, did not think that the Supreme Court's verdict would have any bearing on the electoral process in Bihar.
The constitutional bench of the apex court has reserved its judgement on challening the dismissal of the Bihar state assembly by Buta Singh. "I hope the Supreme Court will not revive the earlier assembly because the people have already filed their nominations and they would be spending their money during the election campaign," he said.
Arun Jaitley, general secretary of the BJP and incharge of the Bihar elections, said that while former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee would address at least two big rallies in each of the four phases of the elections, party president Lal Kishenchand Advani would be addressing at least 15 rallies in one phase and thereby he would be able to cover more then 60 odd rallies in all the four phases.
Talking about the uncertainty whether or not Uma Bharti, former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh would be campaigning for party candidates, Jaitley replies in affirmative. "It is the BJP leadership, which will decide who will campagin for our candidates," he said when asked if the party would abide by the request of the JD-U, who does not want Bharti to campaign during the elections for their candidates for fear of loosing votes of the Chandervanshi community.
Bharti had made derogatory remarks against the community during her one of the rallies in the last assembly election.
Jaitley would be campaiging in Bihar from October 7 onwards. The party has so far not decided the venue from where it would be launching its campaign for the forthcoming assembly elections.
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