After his Kerala visit where Chief Minister Nitish Kumar addressed three election meetings on Saturday, he would go to Jharkhand’s coal belt Dhanbad to address pro-prohibition rallies organised by women organisations on May 10 and then will fly to Varanasi on May 12 to hold JD(U)’s political convention.
Nitish, who is now national president of the JD(U), has very carefully chosen Varanasi, not very far from the Bihar-UP borders, to hold its political event since it is the Parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The JD(U) event will be held at a place called Pindra close to Varanasi airport for which some senior leaders of the party have been asked to camp there and galvanise support for Bihar CM. They are campaigning that Nitish is the only person who is successfully challenging Modi and his popularity was crossing the borders and poised to become a pan India leader with his image and aggressive prohibition campaign.
The selection of Varanasi is being viewed differently in the political circles. While BJP see it as Nitish’s day dreaming, JD(U) rank and file say the event will have a positive impact in Poorvanchal region of poll bound UP. “Our target is to strengthen party and pose challenge to BJP,” said JD(U) spokesman Niraj Kumar.
The JD(U) received a setback in UP when the planned merger of Rashtriya lok Dal (RlD) of Ajit Singh with JD(U)hit roadblock. The RlD had put up some conditions before merger which were unacceptable to JD(U) leadership. One of them was sending Ajit Singh to Rajya Sabha from Bihar. Singh is now supposed to be getting closer to the BJP.
Expectedly, Nitish’s proposed visit to Jharkhand and UP is not going down well with the Chief Ministers of the two neighbouring States. The two State Governments instead of extending help to Bihar in the implementation of its prohibition policy have in fact issued new licenses for the opening of new liquor shops on the borders much to the chagrin of Nitish.
Seemingly, Nitish with a sense of vengeance will aggressively campaign for prohibition in Jharkhand by addressing the anti-liquor women bodies which have invited Bihar CM. In UP, the ruling Samajwadi Party, whose supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav does not see Nitish eye to eye post an aborted attempt of the merger of Janata Parivar constituents. Yadav walked out of the initiative and fielded a number of candidates in Bihar Assembly polls but not a single of them could win in the strong current of three parties Maha gathbandhan. Even as political observers say could be as influential in UP as Mulayam proved in Bihar, but the way JD(U) is making all efforts to show its strength is quite disenchanting to the ruling party in UP.