BJP asks its Bihar MPs to promote central schemes

PATNA: The BJP has decided to rope in its Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs from Bihar to counter the opposition attacks in the state and also launch a publicity binge in favour of the central government, besides seeking their active support to the party’s national programmes.
While this is being done as part of the BJP’s pan-India exercise, the Bihar Lok Sabha MPs and Rajya Sabha members got together on Thursday in New Delhi for an address by the party’s national general secretary (organisation) B L Santosh.State BJP president and West Champaran MP Dr Sanjay Jaiswal, state general secretary (organisation) Nagendra and other functionaries also participated in the meeting.
The BJP has 17 Lok Sabha MPs in Bihar and also five Rajya Sabha members – Gopal Narain singh, Satish Chandra Dubey, Vivek Thakur, Rakesh Sinha and Sushil Kumar Modi.
“The meeting of the MPs from Bihar was held on the sidelines of the monsoon session of the Parliament. This is a normal exercise. The aim is to have better coordination among the organization, government and elected public representatives,” state BJP spokesman Prem Ranjan Patel said.
“The MPs have to lend their support to the party’s national programmes and highlight the pro-poor and other policies of the central government. They also have to reach out to people to inform them about such policies, besides helping in monitoring of the central schemes and projects to the benefit of people,” Patel added.
Among the party’s national programmes are training of the office-bearers and others at the national, state and district levels, as well as strengthening of the organization wherever it is weak. While Patel reiterated that the decision to rope in the MPs is normal exercise, it has gained added significance in view of the fact that the opposition parties have got activated on various issues.
To add to that, in Bihar, policy differences have surfaced between the BJP and JD(U) within the state NDA on certain issues, like the need for population control law and caste-based Census.
While the BJP has pitched for population control by force of law, the JD(U) has been insisting on mass education of women for reducing the fertility rate for more effective population control.
Further, the BJP has favoured caste census of only the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) groups, but the JD(U) has come on the same page with the opposition parties like the RJD in demanding the general caste-based census.
However, what concerns the national BJP most is that the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre has been facing a storm of criticism and protests from the opposition parties on various counts on a host of issues, including the “misuse” of Pegasus spyware, price rise and the demands of agitating farmers.