BJP chief Amit Shah addressing a rally in Patna on Tuesday
BJP chief Amit Shah launched his party's campaign for the Bihar elections at a rally in Patna's massive Gandhi Maidan today, offering political rivals a bit of math.
"I want to tell Laluji. Zero plus zero is zero. No matter what alliance you form, nothing is going to happen," said Mr Shah, also tearing into Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for opposing the Centre's land reforms.
"I want to ask Nitish Kumar, just how many sugar mills are being run in Bihar? How many malls have come up in their place? How many roads are in good condition?" the BJP chief said, asserting that the big crowd at the rally "suggests there will be a BJP government in Bihar soon, whatever their alliance."
In the crucial state elections later this year, the BJP will battle the combined might of stalwarts Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav, with the Congress as a third partner.
The BJP and its allies bagged 32 of Bihar's 40 seats in the national elections last year; Lalu and Nitish were left scrounging. But they had fought separately, bitter rivals for years. A common need to take on the BJP brought them together and in by-elections late last year, they bested the rival party.
For the BJP, the November election in Bihar will be the first big test after its total rout in Delhi at the hands of the young Aam Aadmi Party, a defeat that has sent the party's strategists back to the drawing board. The early start to its campaign is also seen as a fallout of the Delhi debacle.
This will be the first Assembly election in Bihar that the BJP will contest on its own in a very long time. For 17 years, it played junior partner to Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) in an alliance that brought together the BJP's upper caste vote bank and Nitish Kumar's base among the state's Dalits and Mahadalits and Muslims.
Now that alliance is gone and the BJP must cover its own ground.