Not in favour of midterm Bihar Assembly polls: Tejashwi

A day after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said Bihar Assembly elections will be held as scheduled in 2020, opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav on Monday said his party was also not in favour of midterm polls.

"Our Rashtriya Janata Dal is not in favour of midterm Assembly polls because Bihar has witnessed four government in four years and the state is not ready for fifth," Tejashwi told the media here.

Tejashwi, a former Deputy Chief Minister, said holding the Assembly polls time and again put extra burden on people and the RJD did not want any such thing to happen for now.

But, Tejashwi said, the RJD is ready for Assembly polls any time. "The RJD is ready to uproot a government that has betrayed its mandate."

He said Nitish Kumar's politics is full of contradictions. "Nitish Kumar has been taking U-turns repeatedly; he is a typical Paltu Ram."

"Till recently, Nitish Kumar and his JD-U have repeatedly said that they were in favour of holding Assembly polls along with the Lok Sabha polls in 2019. But now, Nitish Kumar is saying that the Assembly polls will be held in 2020 and that he is not in favour of Assembly polls with Lok Sabha polls," the RJD leader said.

Sensing revolt by Janata Dal-United legislators, the Chief Minister on Sunday assured them that the Assembly polls will be held on time in 2020 in Bihar.

"Let there be no confusion. The mandate (for us) is for five years. The term of the Lok Sabha ends in 2019, while the Assembly will complete its term in 2020. Polls will be held on time," the Chief Minister said.

Nitish Kumar said his party supported the idea of simultaneous polls in principle, but modalities have to be worked out first.

--IANS

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