Chirag Paswan to embark on yatra from February 21

PATNA: Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) national president and Jamui MP Chirag Paswan on Saturday said he would embark on the statewide ‘yatra’ from February 21 and address a rally in every district culminating in a state-level rally at Gandhi Maidan on the birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar on April 14.
Stating that the theme of his yatra and political campaign would be “Bihar first, Bihari first,” Chirag said the Nitish Kumar government has done many developmental works and scripted turnaround stories about the state, “but time has come to move beyond them”. He also said a committee would be constituted to prepare the ‘vision document’, which would have inputs from him, the party and other LJP leaders.
Talking to media after the LJP’s state committee meeting here, Chirag refused to make any claim as to the number of assembly seats his party would like to contest in the assembly elections later this year, maintaining that the NDA partners would first reach at a formula for seat sharing.
He, however, said the LJP has been making preparations on the 119 assembly seats at which the NDA partners do not have their sitting MLAs and the panels of the party’s potential candidates would be prepared by the state parliamentary board with respect to them for consideration by the central parliamentary board, so that the party could “zero in on the seats that could go to its kitty.”
At the state committee meeting, the names of the extended committee were also announced, besides taking decisions with regard to gearing up for the poll preparation exercise. State LJP president Prince Raj and the party’s campaign committee chairman cum MLA Raju Tiwari accompanied Chirag.
The standing criteria for the shortlisting and final selection of the potential candidates are two-fold — that they would have to make 25,000 members in each of their constituency concerned and also constitute the booth-level committees.
The state assembly elections are due in October-November this year, but quality difference has come in the NDA in terms of its present coalition partners compared to the 2015 assembly elections. While the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) led by Upendra Kushwaha and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) headed by Jitan Ram Manjhi are out of the NDA, the JD(U) joined it in July 2017. Incidentally, during the parliamentary elections last year, the BJP and JD(U) shared the 40 parliamentary seats, keeping 17 seats each on the 50:50 formula, leaving the six seats for the LJP.