The BJP in Bihar on Sunday bristled at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's claim that the party could be bundled out in the next Lok Sabha polls by a united opposition, and said "he deserved little attention".
Mocking Kumar, state BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal claimed that the JD(U) supremo was "no longer taken seriously by people".
In a Facebook post, without mentioning Kumar or JD(U) by name, Jaiswal said "the bluster of bundling out BJP for 50 seats out of nearly 540 in Parliament is ridiculous (hasyaspad)".
The JD(U)'s de factor leader, who snapped ties with BJP barely a month ago, made the averment at his party's state executive meeting on Saturday.
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The septuagenarian, whose party wants him to play a "national" role, is scheduled to visit Delhi on Monday for a three-day trip during which he is likely to hold talks with leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal.
The development comes barely a week after the Patna visit of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao who met Kumar and RJD president Lalu Prasad and gave a clarion call for "BJP-mukt Bharat".
However, Jaiswal sought to berate Kumar pointing out that the JD(U) had "fewer than 50 MLAs in 243-strong Bihar assembly, with zero presence in adjoining Jharkhand".
The 2020 assembly polls saw the JD(U), for the first time, returning with a tally which was lower than that of the BJP.
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The JD(U) has blamed the setback on a "conspiracy" by the BJP as many of its rebel candidates contested elections on tickets of LJP, then headed by Chirag Paswan, who had declared that he wanted to oust Kumar from power and help the saffron party form its own government.
Nonetheless, Jaiswal insisted that JD(U) was "not able to stand on its feet 28 years after establishment" and recounted the 2014 Lok Sabha polls which it fought alone and ended up "forfeiting deposits in 36 out of 40 seats".
The Lok Sabha elections were followed, a year later, by the BJP's crushing defeat in assembly polls at the hands of a Grand Alliance comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress
Two years later, Kumar returned to NDA and in 2019 JD(U) and BJP contested 17 Lok Sabha seats each.
The BJP won all seats it had contested while JD(U) bagged one less than that.
-With PTI Input
