Patna, Jul 30 (PTI) With assembly polls in Bihar due later this year, the opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday unveiled a mass outreach programme involving its “national level” leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, who will hold public meetings from the second week of August.
Yadav, who heads the coalition’s coordination committee for the upcoming elections, and is the de facto chief ministerial candidate, addressed a press conference.
“Today, a meeting of the INDIA bloc’s coordination committee was held. It was decided that after Raksha Bandhan, national-level leaders of all constituents shall fan out across the state, taking out yatras and holding rallies in all the nine divisions,” the leader of the opposition in the state assembly said.
Raksha Bandhan falls on August 9. Elections to the 243-member Bihar Assembly have to be completed by the end of November.
He added, “I myself will be hitting the streets, raising issues like the special intensive revision of electoral rolls that threatens to rob the people of their voting rights, soaring crime graph in the state, where 100 murders have taken place in the last 10 days, and rampant corruption, reflected in the CAG pointing out non-submission of utilisation certifications for funds to the tune of Rs 70,000 crore.” The former deputy chief minister added, “Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, will also be with us to lend heft to our mass outreach programme. I have been personally in touch with him. We will share a detailed programme in due course.” “The people of the state are completely fed up with the Nitish Kumar government and they are yearning for a change,” he claimed.
The INDIA bloc, which is also called ‘Mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance) in Bihar, includes three Left parties — CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI(M) and CPI — besides RJD and Congress.
In the 2020 assembly elections, the coalition had fallen short of a majority by just a dozen seats, polling just about 12,000 votes less than the formidable NDA, which has been ruling the state for two decades. PTI NAC ACD
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