BJP shifts Bihar battle to ‘corruption’ pitch against Tejashwi Yadav

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will make alleged corruption by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav the centrepiece of its Bihar campaign, shifting from years of framing the contest around “jungle raj”.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA/ TDG NETWORK

Leader of opposition in Bihar State Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav address a press conference at his official residence, in Patna on Sunday.

Senior party figures fanned out on Sunday with coordinated attacks on the Opposition, even as the Mahagathbandhan countered with promises, charges of nonperformance against the NDA and a call for change. Voting is scheduled in two phases on 6 and 11 November, with counting on 14 November.

Party strategists said the focus would move from law and order to “financial impropriety and misuse of office”, citing Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) probes involving the Yadav family. According to BJP sources, the campaign will foreground allegations that two IRCTC hotels in Puri and Ranchi were allotted during Lalu Prasad Yadav’s tenure as Railways Minister in exchange for land in Patna—later owned by a company whose shares were transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and Rabri Devi. The BJP also plans to highlight the 2017 construction of a Patna mall on that land, alleging illegal soil lifting from the city zoo when Tej Pratap Yadav was Forest Minister, and to flag a Kolkata-based shell firm purported to have bought a Rs 10-crore house without real business activity.