Nitish Kumar goes knocking on doors as assembly polls loom

Bihar's ruling Janata Dal-United on Thursday launched 'Har Ghar Dastak' (knock on every door) campaign on Thursday to reach out to millions of voters at their doorsteps ahead of the coming state assembly elections.

While Chief Minister Nitish Kumar - declared the chief ministerial candidate of the JD-U, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and NCP - launched the campaign in Patna, state JD-U leaders and workers kick-started it simultaneously from 10,000 locations across Bihar.

Nitish Kumar personally went about knocking on the doors of several houses in Paschim Darwaja locality in Patna Saheb assembly constituency to launch the ambitious campaign of the JD-U to reach out to one crore households and meet three crore people.

"Nitish Kumar personally knocked on the doors of several houses in old Patna city and asked people whether they were happy with his development work. He appealed to them to give him another chance," said a JD-U leader who accompanied Nitish Kumar on the door-to-door walk.

Hundreds of JD-U leaders and workers accompanied Nitish Kumar during the campaign.

State JD-U president Vashisht Narain Singh launched the campaign at the party office.

"JD-U's aim is to reach out to at least three to four crore voters through this campaign. Thousands of party workers and leaders, including ministers, members of parliament and legislators have been involved in knocking on people's doors to personally reach out to them," Vashisht Narain Singh said.

This door-to-door campaign is the brainchild of Prashant Kishore, an erstwhile key strategist of Narendra Modi during the last Lok Sabha polls.

Last month, Nitish Kumar launched a high-tech 'Badh Chala Bihar' (Bihar moving forward) initiative to directly reach out to the masses and seek their ideas and suggestions for the state's development. That too was the brainchild of Prashant Kishore.

But the state Election Commission (EC) on Saturday suspended the 'Badh Chala Bihar' campaign after the Bharatiya Janata Party complained that it violated the Model Code of Conduct for the biennial elections to the state legislative council and misuse of government funds and resources.