Ram Vilas Paswan defends Narendra Modi, Amit Shah on Bihar poll drubbing

Patna: Union Minister and LJP president Ram Vilas Paswan on Saturday came to the defence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah in the wake of NDA debacle in Bihar.

"It's not the defeat of NDA but defeat of public of Bihar," Paswan told reporters.

When asked if NDA drubbing in Bihar was a defeat of the Prime Minister on whose face the ruling coalition had gone to polls, Paswan disagreed and thanked Modi and Shah for successful campaigning in the state.

"PM would have been defeated if his election meetings had flopped. But we saw a huge gathering of people in his all election meetings," the LJP chief said, adding, "We should be thankful to the PM for devoting so much time to Bihar to know about its problems."

"NDA had contested elections not in the name of PM but in the name of development of Bihar," he said.

Paswan also praised Shah saying he worked hard to galvanise party workers by making surprise visits to district party headquarters to establish proper coordination between workers of constituent parties.

The LJP leader felt that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar cleverly enacted social engineering by recommending many OBC castes for EBC status and EBCs into SCs/STs to win their votes.

Paswan had earlier said that opposition parties in Bihar were successful in convincing people that reservation will go and minorities won't be safe if NDA came to power. He said a comprehensive review meeting of LJP on recent Bihar elections would be held here on November 28 to analyse causes of defeat. LJP which had fought 41 seats as part of NDA coalition managed to win only two seats in the polls.