Having lost power in Bihar, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda on Tuesday held a meeting with the party's State unit leaders here at the party's headquarters to discuss, among other issues, the selection of a new Bihar BJP chief in place of Sanjay Jaiswal.
According to sources , the core committee meeting, the first after the split with the erstwhile ally JD(U), also deliberated on the naming the leader of Opposition in the Assembly and Legislative Council.
Nadda and Shah chaired the meeting wherein party's general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh was also present.
Union Ministers Ashwini Choubey, Giriraj Singh and Nityanand Rai, and the party's senior leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Sushil Modi – all of whom are from Bihar – attended the meeting.
The current BJP's Bihar unit president Sanjay Jaiswal, former deputy chief ministers Tarkishore Prasad and Renu Devi, and former minister in the state government Shahnawaz Hussain were present in the meeting.
The long-drawn discussion which commenced in the evening flagged the issues which the state leadership should be taking up as the main opposition party in the assembly and outside it to pin-down the RJD-JDU-led-coalition in the state and play-up the themes of 'return of Jungle raj', and 'oppottunism' and 'betrayal' by the JDU.
It sought the state BJP leaders to completely "redefine" its role in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.
The party leadership also deliberated upon the BJP's future course of action and the strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Bihar which has 40 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019,the BJP- JDU combine had swept the Lok Sabha polls winning 39 of the 40 seats.
Besides considering new state chief , several new organisational changes upto the booth levels also came up for discussion in the meeting.
The huddle of the top central and state leades comes a day Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expanded his two-member cabinet, which, till now, included Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav besides him. Thirty-one ministers took oath with the RJD getting a lion's share.
Before the meeting, the BJP’s national media co-incharge Sanjay Mayukh said the meeting aims to firm up the party’s strategy in the state in taking on the JDU-RJD government which he termed “disjointed". “It’s Jungle Raj 2.0 in Bihar. As far as the BJP is concerned we will raise our voice and take the issues of people from the road to Assembly", he said.