Shehzad Poonawala EXCL on NDA’s Landslide Victory in Bihar Elections 2025

Asianet News English

Watch an exclusive conversation with Shehzad Poonawala, national spokesperson for the BJP, as he breaks down the massive NDA win in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections. He addresses criticisms of BJP fighting under JD(U)’s shadow, explains Chirag Paswan’s surge to 19 seats, and shares thoughts on the CM question. Poonawala also responds to opposition claims, discusses the failure of Mahagathbandhan, and the future of governance and development in Bihar.&nbsp;

Transcript

00:00joining us today is shahzad poonawala the national spokesperson of the bhartya janta party thank you

00:16so much for speaking with asianet news and a big congratulations to you and your party thank you

00:22very much for inviting me and all the kudos and congratulations go to the people of bihar

00:27so i from the bottom of my heart thank the people of bihar for selecting and electing those people

00:33who stand with sushasana and sir ram raj not with general the opposition had this uh criticism for

00:40the india alliance that a bjp doesn't hold much sway on ground in bihar uh it is fighting under

00:47the shadow of jdu how do you respond to that look we don't fight under anybody's shadow nor does

00:52anybody else fight under our shadow we are all we are all fighting as the punch pandas we are the

00:58five brothers who fought together in their alliance in fact there was no mission or vision there was

01:03only confusion ambition for position and apna apna division and therefore you saw that till the last

01:09minute they did not announce who the faces till the last minute they did not even decide which

01:14party is contesting with seats whereas we before the first phase itself had declared that 101 101 for

01:20jdu and djp 29 for chirag paswanji's party and six and six for ham and for upendr kushwa's jeep party

01:28but on the other hand till now you don't know how many seats which party fought because many seats

01:32they were fighting against each other so this is their own internal division and fractionalism that they

01:38are imposing upon others uh shahzad you mentioned chirag paswan in 2020 he got just one seat and this time

01:45around he got 19 seats out of 29 why do you think this happened because earlier there was

01:50a criticism that by giving so many seats to chirag paswan nda bjp is trying to cut into the votes of

01:55jdu no look last time he had not fought with our alliance he had fought independently this time

02:01he has fought part of our alliance and when he has fought part of our alliance everybody has

02:05contributed towards ensuring that the alliance as a whole performs better and therefore you see bjp has

02:10performed better jdu has performed better ljp has performed better hum has performed better kushwa

02:15has performed better so it is a cumulative effect of everybody coming together let me ask you the big

02:20question who do you think will be the chief minister of bihar these are not decisions that i at my level

02:27decide the parliamentary board of the party will decide but you must be knowing something the inside

02:31story the inside story is only this that we are a party that follows uh constitution so therefore the

02:37elected uh mlas the parliamentary board and the alliance partners will sit together very soon we will be

02:42getting to know some in the opposition are also saying that you'll keep nitish kumar the helm for

02:48a couple of years and then we'll see a change of guard i think they should be bothered about why

02:53they have faced such a decimation and route rather than uh uh speculate they were saying nitish kumar

02:58ji is finished one person said ke nitish ji ki party ko 25 seats agar ate hai toh maim rajniti chodh dhu

03:04then one person has said that nitish ji ka health theek nahi hai one person has commented on the mental

03:09state of nitish ji all of those things have been given a karara reply reply by the people of bihar

03:15i think for now at least they should stop speculating and look today where they are

03:19standing they have as an alliance got less than 40 seats congress has got merely five or six seats

03:26they have lost even the bastions that they consider to be their own which is the bastions in the muslim

03:31dominated and the adav dominated wells even there the nd has performed well out of the uh 70 odd seats

03:37where there's 30 or 20 percent muslim vote the nd has won 50 percent uh 50 seats so i think they

03:43should be bothered about their own performance rather than uh be bothered about what we are doing

03:47our alliance that the electoral issue which congress raised of sir it failed miserably on ground

03:55i think the bomb self detonated but it's not detonated for the first time in the hands of rahul

04:00gandhi this was never an issue even tejasvi and uh other leaders of the congress did not agree with

04:06this issue the fact of the matter is that this uh issue is actually just an excuse an alibi that has

04:12been created in order to put the blame of their defeat from the pariwar onto somebody else and

04:18therefore in bihar case they had a pre-poll excuse in most other cases they have post-poll excuse for

04:24in example in maharashtra they came after the maharashtra election haryana after the haryana election they

04:29made these allegations none of them were proven in a court of law and ironically they say that sir is good in

04:34maharashtra where they are demanding it before the local polls and they say it's bad in bihar they

04:39did sir about 10 total times before 2014 those were good sirs when they themselves demand that

04:45vote should be removed which are the votes of the fake ids or fake voters or duplicate votes that time

04:50it is good so i don't know they are confused about sir they are confused about this entire thing and it

04:55is only an alibi or an excuse to create disinformation and deficit of trust in constitutional

05:01bodies so that the blame of the defeat does not go on the pariwar do you think that jungle raj will

05:06be a pre-poll issue for bjp in west bengal look there is a dbt model of prime minister direct benefit

05:14transfer which the prime minister gives to the crores of beneficiaries in this country and there

05:18is a dbt model of these vipakshani parties and that dbt is dynasty brashtachar and tushtikaran and part of

05:24this dynasty brashtachar and tushtikaran is the complete damage to the law and order situation in that

05:30state where they come to power we've seen it in lalu's 15 years we are seeing it in mamata banerji's

05:35almost 14 15 years of rule from 2011 onwards look at the way women are security has become if a

05:42woman goes out at 8 pm she gets raped and then the state machinery starts blaming the woman rg

05:47kar incident took place we saw the sandesh kali incident where shajashi was responsible for the

05:51rapes there's unprecedented corruption bags and piles of money was found in the house of minister partha

05:57there was a ssc scam which was uh you know unearthed by the high court and the cbi

06:01so this is a government which is promoting mafia it is promoting jihadis atankis ghuspaitiyas and on

06:09the other hand even the women maa marti manush mahila and even mps the tribal mp khagen murmu he was

06:15beaten up black and blue nobody is safe in west bengal so it is complete jungle raj and just like ganga

06:21flows from bihar to bengal the ganga of vikas and sushasan and good governance also has to flow

06:26from bengal bhai to bengal but shahzad this dbt model of bjp is being criticized by the opposition

06:33party saying why 10 000 rupees were transferred to the accounts of women days ahead of election

06:38why did they promise 1500 rupees in himachal and how many women why did they promise 8 000

06:43rupees kata kata kata before the general election and they have not given to anybody why did they

06:48promise 22 2000 rupees in karnataka why did they promise 2500 rupees in telangana why did amadmi

06:55party promised 1000 rupees in punjab and none of the places they have actually done our model is

06:59women empowerment which starts from 2000 year 2000 whether it's gujarat cm modiji whether it's

07:06bhar cm nitish ji whether it is madhya pradesh cm shivaraj ji all of them started the schemes beti

07:12bachau schemes schemes to empower the women to give them cycle uniforms send them to school ensure

07:17dropout rates are reduced then give them participation in the public sector jobs give them participation in

07:22police force one third of br's police force is women police force then to give the reservation

07:26at the central level in the parliament then to give uh jalsenal shawchale yojna to give the houses in

07:31the name of women and now give them a certain sum corpus so that they can start their business and become

07:36the empowered women lakpati didi they want to make misa didi they want to make rohini didi they want to

07:42make priyanka didi we want to make lakpati didi so they blame us why do you think that janswaraj was

07:48unable to open its account and ended up with a complete duck because this is a party which

07:53fought on development issues because this is a party which was in the media not on the ground

07:59and media wallahs have given them too much oxygen and in the reality there was nothing so many times

08:04media hypes personalities who are nothing on the ground but because of the krp and the advertisement

08:10issues media highlights them and then there's nothing on the ground he did more interviews than

08:14uh say party like hm or party like uh mim or party like uh i would say uh uh open the khushwa they

08:24have got more seats but they did not get the airtime so it's all about media's projection but he was not

08:29on the ground and this has been seen by the vote share that he got i think the media should be cautious

08:35about the next uh you know person they inflate and make the hero like rahul gandhi also last 21 years

08:41some sections of media they're trying to project him as leader but from the mukama seat anand singh has

08:47won but right now he's in jail he has won the elections he has won the constituency do you

08:53think that nda will ensure now to expedite the investigations the very fact that he went to jail

08:59despite being our candidate shows that we are not interfering in the law and order situation

09:03anybody has done a crime then the law and order will take over there will be a full process of law

09:08we are not like the rjd shameless that the person is convicted five times and first time he's convicted

09:14in 2013 and then he's made national president that is lalu pasad yadav so i think that on the one hand

09:20there was a model where aprad and aparadis got state protection and then there was a model where

09:25firauti was decided in the cm's house and today even if it is our own we don't hesitate in taking the

09:31case up even during the peak of elections so this is the difference between the kanun karaj of nda

09:37and jangal raj of laluji this time around we saw that the highlight was the hospitals the dire

09:43conditions of the hospitals in bihar and of course uh the bridges in bihar do you think that these uh

09:49issues which were highlighted during elections will be uh sorted i think bihar when it was handed over

09:57to the bjp jdu government at that time there was less than 10 000 kilometers of rural roads there was very

10:04few hospital beds and hospitals there were very few colleges there was complete chaos in law and order

10:10situation uh less than 10 percent of toilet and tap water coverage less than 25 30 percent of

10:16electricity coverage very little power generation lack of environment to create any kind of factories

10:23and industries from there bihar has been pulled up to a place where it has now got a gdp growth which

10:30is one of the fastest in the country it has got a budget which has increased from just about 20 000

10:35crores to 3 lakh crores it has got a gdp size or size of economy which has grown from 70 000 crores to

10:41almost nine and a half lakh crores it has got a road network of one and a half lakh kilometers in rural

10:45areas it has now got tap water and toilet correction of 100 percent almost so we have taken up bihar from

10:52a place where it was completely made into bimaru and taken it to the path of bemisar of course in this

10:58growth process there will be some areas where some of the infrastructure will not be as good

11:03or may suffer some issues and that we are committed to fix i think people have also given a message

11:08that there might be some issues and we don't deny that but the best person to fix those issues is the

11:13nda and therefore the nda will continue to do that and now we will see new levels of growth and

11:18development in there already you would be happy to know that there are 700 registered startups in bihar

11:24you would be happy to know that the sugar mill has started already uh the rida sugar mill you

11:29would be happy to know that one of the biggest bottling plants of pepsico which is varun barrage is

11:34is in uh baroni you will be happy to know that majority of the big manufacturers of biscuit are

11:39operating out of patna so now many opportunities are being created and infrastructure will continue to

11:44be the dominating story of bihar in 2025-2013

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