CM name after results, will win two-thirds majority: Amit Shah

PATNA: BJP president Amit Shah on Monday claimed that the NDA would win Bihar polls with two-thirds majority. “We will select our CM candidate only after the declaration of results.
The NDA will win 162 of the 243 assembly seats in Bihar,” Shah told mediapersons at the state BJP headquarters here.
Shah’s statement assumed significance in the light of criticism the NDA has been facing from grand alliance functionaries for not naming its chief ministerial candidate.
Shah said the BJP will take a final call on the CM candidate only after the meeting of newly elected representatives of NDA. The BJP alone is contesting 157 of the 243 assembly seats. Among its NDA partners, the LJP is contesting 42 seats, RLSP 23 and HAM-S 21. The elections to 49 seats in the first phase and 32 in the second phase have already been over.
The BJP chief claimed that the NDA would win 32-34 seats of the first phase and 22-24 of the second. “Our figure is on the basis of booth-level voter preferences that we exchanged with our NDA partners on Sunday night,” Shah said, adding that voters have reposed their faith in the PM’s development agenda. “Women, youths and the poor turned up in large numbers in polling booths on election days to vote for the NDA candidates,” Shah said.
He added that apart from the Rs 1.65 lakh crore special package (including Rs 40,000 crore ongoing schemes) promised by the PM, the Centre would also give Bihar Rs 2 lakh crore more than what the state had earlier got as per recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission.
“People of Bihar do not want to live with the Bimaru state tag. They do not want return of ‘jungle raj II’. For long they have been migrating for ‘padhai, kamai aur dawai (education, work and healthcare)’ to other states,” Shah said.
“BJP-ruled Jharkhand has catapulted itself to third position in the country on “ease of doing business”, while Bihar has dropped to 27th rank where Jhakrhand was earlier placed,” he added.
Without taking the name of Nitish Kumar, Shah said Bihar’s journey towards development got derailed after the JD(U) severed its ties with BJP in June 2013. Referring to ‘forward-backward fight,’ as recently referred to by RJD chief Lalu Prasad, Shah said, “People who want to fight Bihar elections on these lines have forgotten that it is not 1990. A lot of water has flowed down the Ganga. BJP does not practice and believe in caste politics.”