Nitish downplays legislative council poll results

Downplaying the Legislative Council poll results, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today again said the outcome did not deserve much attention as the voters were limited in numbers.
"The Legislative Council verdict does not deserve much attention given that there were limited number of voters in the polls," he told reporters at a press conference on the sidelines of the weekly Janata Ke Durbar Mein Mukhyamantri at his official residence.
"The Legislative Council polls are generally candidate-centric than party-centric and the outcome depends on management skills of the candidates," Kumar said.
In the polls for the 24 seats of the Legislative Council, BJP had won 12 seats while the alliance of RJD, JD(U) and Congress bagged 10.

Apparently appearing to be unflustered by the Council poll results, the Chief Minister said that it would have no bearing on the Assembly polls due later this year.
Kumar dismissed speculations that RJD supremo Lalu Prasad had failed to bring in Yadav votes in favour of the alliance, asking "when these elections were not on party lines, where does the question arise about transfer of voters"?

Refusing to take the council verdict as a setback to the secular alliance, he said that he would not take it seriously as the voters themselves were not serious about exercising their franchise going by the fact that hundreds of ballot papers were declared invalid on technical ground as voters had not mentioned their first three preferences among candidates.

On BJP celebrating the poll verdict, the senior JD(U) leader said, "Let them go overboard in celebrating the verdict," and reminded the view aired by BJP MP Shatrughan Singh yesterday warning his party against over-the-top celerbrations.
"Shatrughan Sinha is an experienced leader," Kumar said and sympathised with the Bollywood actor who, he noted, was required only for elections and marginalised subsequently.
"What can be expected of a party when it puts its senior-most leader L K Advani in old age home?" he asked.