BJP finalises strategy for Bihar polls, to fight for Bihari pride

Taking a leaf out of the Telugu Desam Party's ruling credo of "Telugu self-respect", LK Advani today launched a movement for the resurrection of "Bihari pride" as the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) slogan for the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state.

Indicating how much the BJP had learnt from its experience as a partner in a coalition, Advani gave the call to unite all Biharis and charged Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) with having "impoverished the state, criminalised politics and governance and made corruption its creed".

Addressing the inaugural session of the party's three-day national executive currently on in Ranchi, Advani said, "the battle is not only for unseating an incumbent government that belongs to an opposition party. It is actually for emancipating Biharis from 15 years of jungle raj, the kind of which no state in the country has ever seen".

"The BJP charges the RJD and all its supporters of being assaulters on Bihar pride. In the glorious role it played in the freedom movement, in its having been one of the best managed and most richly endowed states in the initial decades of independence and in the contribution that its idealistic youth and students made to the defence of democracy under the inspiring leadership of Jaiprakash Narayan," Advani said at the meeting, which is expected to draw up the party's strategy for coming Assembly elections in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana.

With this supra-Hindu appeal to the state, Advani, at one stroke succeeded in disarming the Janata Dal(U), the BJP's electoral ally in Bihar, which has lately shown signs of restiveness at the BJP's repeated allusion to Hindu motifs and symbols.

Vowing to puncture the balloon of the RJD's invincibility at the outset of the campaign, he said, "we will tell the people of Bihar: have no fear. Our alliance is the real and only alternative, which is capable of liberating Bihar from the evil force that has captured your state".

Advani's appeal also cut across caste and religious alignments to appeal the Bihari in every citizen of the state.

"Our alliance is also capable of building a new and proud Bihar in which every citizen belonging to every caste and community will feel justice done to them and in which Bihar will be brought back to the track of rapid and all round development to occupy its rightful place in the march to a prosperous and strong India," Advani said.

On Haryana, he said the party's primary objective was to increase its own strength in the new Assembly to the maximum possible extent, so that "we emerge as an effective alternative to the discredited Congress".

On Jharkhand, he asked the party leaders to caution the people that a mandate "to our adversaries would be an invitation to a reign of terror, social strife, criminalisation of governance and unlimited corruption".