BJP to contest all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar

Apparently not wanting to be left in the lurch if ally JD(U) decides to break the alliance, the State BJP unit is bracing itself to contest all 40 parliamentary seats in Bihar.

“Yes, we are preparing to contest all 40 Lok Sabha seats from Bihar in the next general elections after taking into account all possibilities, including the JD(U) deciding to sever ties with us at some stage,” State unit BJP President C. P. Thakur told PTI here today.

He, however, emphasised that the JD(U) breaking away from its alliance with the BJP was just a possibility and he was sure that the ally in Bihar would not do so.

Thakur justified the decision of the BJP’s state unit saying that if the alliance was to remain intact there could be a last minute exchange of Parliamentary constituencies between the two parties.

“We don’t want to remain short in terms of preparation to contest from any of the parliamentary seats,” he said.

Thakur, however, refused to divulge the details of the presentation he made at the BJP’s national executive at Surajkund.

“It will not be fair for me to go public with whatever I said at the party forum,” he said.

Another senior BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi too spoke on the same lines.

“By remaining organisationally strong in all assembly and Parliamentary constituencies, we can help our ally JD(U) by supporting candidates of allies,” he said.

The relations between the BJP and the JD(U) have vitiated in the last couple of months after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said his party would not take a minute to break ties with BJP if it projected the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate.

The leaders of the two alliance partners had engaged in a heated war of words casting aspersions on each other before the senior leadership of the two parties called for a truce and gagged their leaders from making public statements against each other.

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