Nadda meets Nitish before concluding Patna tour, discusses assembly polls

BJP national president J P Nadda on Saturday called on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his counterpart in the JD(U), and is understood to have discussed among other things the state polls due later this year.

Accompanied by national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav, Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and state BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal, Nadda met the chief minister at his official residence here.

JD(U) is an NDA ally running a coalition government in Bihar. The assembly polls, to be held by November, are of vital importance for the coalition led by the BJP, which has been sore after drubbings in Delhi and Jharkhand besides an unexpected setback in Maharashtra.

Nadda shared pictures of his meeting with Kumar — which lasted for over 30 minutes — on his Twitter handle and hailed the chief minister's leadership of the NDA in Bihar for having "ensured all-round development of the state".

The NDA, which in Bihar also includes Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party, had put up its best-ever performance in the Lok Sabha election last year wherein it grabbed 39 out of the 40 seats and established leads in over 220 out of the 243 assembly segments.

Nadda earlier in the day addressed a meeting of the party's 14-member core committee, which included Union ministers like Giriraj Singh, Nityanand Rai and Ashwini Kumar Choubey.

A disparaging remark by veteran RJD leader Jagadanand Singh about the meeting between national presidents of the BJP and the JD(U), however, left the saffron party fuming.

Singh, who heads the RJD's state unit, likened the two parties to lame persons trying to overcome the deficiency by tying up.

In a strongly-worded statement, state BJP spokesman Nikhil Anand said, "Singh has been a veteran socialist, who appears to have lost his moorings with the humiliation of working under those younger to him by 50 years.

"His frivolous remarks are a desperate attempt to appease Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, sons of jailed Lalu Prasad, who calls the shots despite being in jail".