In a bid to connect with the people of Bihar directly, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Wednesday will address them over ‘chai pe charcha’. Modi is also scheduled to address a rally in Muzaffarpur district of the State in the first week of March.
For the first time in the State, a national leader would be addressing common people through video-conferencing to forge direct contact with them. The State unit of the BJP has made elaborate arrangement for Modi’s tea-talk at 36 tea-spots in 16 districts. The rest of the districts too would be covered in next phase of the programme chai pe charcha.
The tea-talk of NaMo would be held for three hours, beginning at 5 pm and during the period he would be making person-to-person contact either with the tea vendors or with the common people sipping tea at the tea spots.
Altogether 15 tea stalls have been identified in Patna alone whereas one each at 15 other districts like Ara, Begusarai, Buxar, Bettiah, Darbhanga, Jehanabad, Purnia, Samastipur, Chapra, Siwan, Sheohar and Muzaffarpur.
“The main purpose of the programme chai pe charcha is make direct contact with the common people who usually discuss politics at tea stalls,” said BJP leader Giriraj Singh. “Our PM nominee Narendra Modi will also discuss political affairs in Bihar with youth sitting at the tea spots,” said State BJP chief Mangal Pandey.
The State BJP has opened a separate IT wing at the State BJP headquarters for conducting such mass contact programmes of the party.
Owner of the Sashi tea stall near the State BJP party headquarters at the Beerchand Patel Marg is among the people who was identified for the NaMo’s chai pe charcha programme said, “I feel blessed and fortunate that such a big leader who has risen in his career selling tea at railway station has remembered us and talk to us directly. I’m so excited to talk to him.”
Same feeling expressed by other selected tea vendors in the lohanipur, SK Nagar, Kankarbagh, Kajipur, S P Verma road, Buddha Colony and other areas of the State capital.
Meanwhile, the BJP has also fixed a programme for a big rally of Narendra Modi on March 3 at Muzaffarpur. The district administration has approved BJP’s demand for MIT ground to hold the rally.
However, the RJD chief lalu Prasad, struggling hard these days to forge an alliance with the Congress party, too has announced to hold a party rally in the same town of Muzaffarpur apparently to thwart the BJP rally to send a positive message to the Congress party.
“I’ve also applied for the same ground to hold my rally there. Now, its up to the Bihar Chief Minister to decide whom he sanctions the ground. But, my plan is final,” declared lalu Prasad in Patna.
The RJD chief’s plan to hold a parallel rally on the same day and at the same ground appeared to be a deft political move by him to project his secular image which he had created after stopping the Rath Yatra and arresting BJP’s patriarch lK Advani on October 23, 1990.
“laluji doesn’t believe that much water has flown down in Ganga since then…he is creating an unnecessary controversy to hog limelight. He might hope to get the crowd returning from our party’s rally to show off his strength,” mocked senior BJP leader Shushil Modi.
Modi also added that even Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could hold his party’s rally in another ground of the town on the same day and all would get the feel of their aukat (capacity).
“Unko aukat pata chal jayega…over 2.5 lakh people will come to our rally and it will be very difficult to manage the crowd in the ground,” he said. Meanwhile, over the rally ground controversy Bihar chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that he was nowhere between it as “he was an external factor”.
Where does I figure into itIJ..I’m an external factor…if there is a controversy over it it’s between the controversy maker and the media,” said Nitish Kumar while adding that, though, the administrative process was to allot the ground on ‘first come first’.
“Those who have applied first will get the ground and it’s a normal practice,” he said while expressing wonder that a rally which was going to be held in March was getting so much of media attention whereas he has been holding his sankalp rally at regular interval but media has ignored them.
“I’m doing rallies but not getting coverage while a rally to be held is hogging all the attention even from now,” wondered Kumar who, of late, has paced up his effort to form a federal front with left and other parties to create a separate Parliamentary bloc in the coming days.