NDA will win over 220 seats in the Bihar Assembly next year, says Nitish Kumar

JD(U) unanimously selects Nitish Kumar as Bihar's chief ministerial candidate for 2025 Assembly election, aiming to secure over 220 seats.

The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) State Executive Committee during its meeting in Patna on Saturday (October 5, 2024) unanimously decided that the Bihar Assembly election coming up next year would be contested under the leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and that he would be the State’s chief ministerial candidate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2025.

Addressing the members of the newly formed committee at the party office, Mr. Kumar reiterated that he had made mistakes twice and would not return to an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). During the meeting, Mr. Kumar also set the goal of securing over 220 out of the 243 Assembly seats in next year’s election.

Mr. Kumar thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for providing special economic assistance to Bihar. He also said that by 2025, his government would have reached the 12 lakh figure in terms of recruitments to jobs in the government, and generated 34 lakh employment opportunities.

Lashing out at the Opposition, the JD(U) supremo said that he considered the whole of Bihar as his family, but the RJD limited itself to only its sons and daughters.

“In next year’s Assembly election, we will win more than 220 seats along with the NDA,” Mr. Kumar said.

After the meeting, JD(U) working president Sanjay Jha, who was present at the meeting along with other senior leaders of the party, briefed the media.

“It was the first meeting of the newly constituted State Executive Committee in which our leader Nitish-ji addressed party leaders for about 45 minutes. He gave us tips on next year’s Assembly election and instructed us to seek votes on the basis of the work done by the State government. He stressed the special category status or special package [provided by the Centre] to Bihar. He has given tasks not only to JD(U) but to the NDA to win 220 seats, [which is] more than what we got in 2010 [Assembly election],” Mr. Jha said.