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.
Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction & Congratulations 0:39 BJP’s role vs JD(U) in the alliance 1:30 Chirag Paswan’s massive win explained 2:10 Who will be Bihar CM? 3:38 Opposition’s defeat & Mahagathbandhan failure 4:56 Criticism of SIR & electoral issues 5:45 ‘Jungle Raj’ narrative for upcoming elections 6:30 Women’s empowerment & welfare schemes 7:44 Why Jan Suraj failed 8:40 Law & order: Anant Singh’s case and accountability 9:31 Bihar’s infrastructure growth & future outlook
00:00Joining us today is Shahzad Poonawala, the National Spokesperson of the Bhartia Janata Party.
00:16Thank you so much for speaking with AsiaNet News and a big congratulations to you and your party.
00:22Thank you very 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 who stand with Sushasana and Ram Raj, not with Jandralaj.
00:37The opposition had this criticism for the India Alliance that BJP doesn't hold much sway on ground in Bihar.
00:46It is fighting under the shadow of JDU. How do you respond to that?
00:49Look, we don't fight under anybody's shadow nor does anybody else fight under our shadow.
00:54We are all fighting as the five pandals. We are the five brothers who fought together.
01:00In their alliance, in fact, there was no mission or vision.
01:03There was only confusion, ambition for position and apana-apana division.
01:08And therefore, you saw that till the last minute, they did not announce who the face is.
01:12Till the last minute, they did not even decide which party is contesting with seats.
01:15Whereas we, before the first phase itself, had declared that 101, 101 for JDU and BJP, 29 for Chirag Paswanji's party and 6 and 6 for HAM and for Upendra Kushwarji's party.
01:28But on the other hand, till now, you don't know how many seats which party fought because many seats they were fighting against each other.
01:33So, this is their own internal division and fractionalism that they are imposing upon others.
01:40Shahzad, you mentioned Chirag Paswan. In 2020, he got just one seat and this time around, he got 19 seats out of 29.
01:48Why do you think this happened? Because earlier there was a criticism that by giving so many seats to Chirag Paswan, BJP is trying to cut into the votes of JDU.
01:56You know, look, last time he had not fought with our alliance, he had fought independently. This time he has fought part of our alliance.
02:02And when he has fought part of our alliance, everybody has contributed towards ensuring that the alliance as a whole performs better.
02:09And therefore, you see BJP has performed better, JDU has performed better, LJP has performed better, HAM has performed better, Kushwarji has performed better.
02:16So, it is a cumulative effect of everybody coming together.
02:20Let me ask you the big question, who do you think will be the Chief Minister of Bihar?
02:23These are not decisions that I, at my level, decide. The parliamentary board of the party will decide.
02:29But you must be knowing something, the inside story.
02:33The inside story is only this, that we are a party that follows a constitution.
02:37So, therefore, the elected MLAs, the parliamentary board and the alliance partners will sit together.
02:42Very soon, we will be getting to know.
02:44Some in the opposition are also saying that you will keep Nitish Kumar, the helm for a couple of years and then we'll see a change of guard.
02:50I think they should be bothered about why they have faced such a decimation and rout rather than speculate.
02:57They were saying that Nitish Kumar Ji is finished.
02:59One person said that if Nitish Ji has 25 seats, I will leave Rajmeet Ji.
03:04Then one person has said that Nitish Ji's health is not good.
03:08One person has commented on the mental state of Nitish Ji.
03:11All of those things have been given a karara reply by the people of Bihar.
03:15I think for now, at least, they should stop speculating.
03:17And look today where they are standing.
03:19They have, as an alliance, got less than 40 seats.
03:23Congress has got nearly 5 or 6 seats.
03:26They have lost even the bastions that they consider to be their own, which is the bastions in the Muslim-dominated and the Adav-dominated welts.
03:33Even there, the NDA has performed well.
03:35Out of the 70-odd seats where there is 30 or 20% Muslim vote, the NDA has won 50 seats.
03:42So, I think they should be bothered about their own performance rather than be bothered about what we are doing.
03:47Do you think that the electoral issue which Congress raised of SIR, it failed miserably on ground?
03:55I think the bomb self-detonated.
03:57But it's not detonated for the first time in the hands of Rahul Gandhi.
04:01This was never an issue.
04:02Even Tejasvi and other leaders of the Congress did not agree with this issue.
04:06The fact of the matter is that this issue is actually just an excuse, an alibi that has been created in order to put the blame of their defeat from the Parivar onto somebody else.
04:18And therefore, in Bihar case, they had a pre-poll excuse.
04:21In most other cases, they have post-poll excuse.
04:24For example, in Maharashtra, they came after the Maharashtra election.
04:27Haryana, after the Haryana election, they made these allegations.
04:30None of them were proven in a court of law.
04:32And ironically, they say that SIR is good in Maharashtra, where they are demanding it before the local polls.
04:37And they say it's bad in Bihar.
04:39They did SIR about 10 times before 2014.
04:43Those were good SIRs.
04:44When they themselves demand that votes should be removed, which are the votes of the fake IDs or fake voters or duplicate votes, that time it is good.
04:51So, I don't know.
04:52They are confused about SIR.
04:54They are confused about this entire thing.
04:55And it is only an alibi or an excuse to create disinformation and deficit of trust in constitutional bodies so that the blame of the defeat does not go on the Parivar.
05:05Do you think that Jangal Raj will be a pre-poll issue for BJP in West Bengal?
05:10Look, there is a DBT model of Prime Minister, direct benefit transfer, which the Prime Minister gives to the crores of beneficiaries in this country.
05:18And there is a DBT model of these Vipakshani parties.
05:21And that DBT is Dynasty, Brashtachar and Tustikaran.
05:23And part of this dynasty, Brashtachar and Tustikaran, is the complete damage to the law and order situation in that state where they come to power.
05:32We have seen it in Lalu's 15 years.
05:34We are seeing it in Mamata Banerjee's almost 14-15 years of rule from 2011 onwards.
05:38Look at the way women's security has become.
05:42If a woman goes out at 8 p.m., she gets raped and then the state machinery starts blaming the woman.
05:47R.G. Kar incident took place.
05:48We saw the Sandesh Kali incident where Shah Jahan Sheik was responsible for the rapes.
05:52There is unprecedented corruption.
05:54Bags and piles of money was found in the house of Minister Partha.
05:57There was an SSC scam which was unearthed by the High Court and the CBI.
06:01So, this is a government which is promoting Mafia.
06:05It is promoting Jihadis, Atankis, Ghuspaitiyas.
06:09And on the other hand, even the women, Maa, Mati, Manush, Mahila and even MPs, the tribal MP Khagen Murmu.
06:15He was beaten up black and blue.
06:17Nobody is safe in West Bengal.
06:19So, it is complete Jungle Raj.
06:20And just like Ganga flows from Bihar to Bengal, the Ganga of Vikas and Sushasen and good governance also has to flow from Bihar to Bengal.
06:28But Shahzad, this DBT model of BJP is being criticized by the opposition party saying why 10,000 rupees were transferred to the accounts of women days ahead of election.
06:38Why did they promise 1,500 rupees in Himachal and how many women did they get?
06:42Why did they promise 8,000 rupees khatta cut khatta cut before the general election and they have not given to anybody?
06:47Why did they promise 2,000 rupees in Karnataka?
06:51Why did they promise 2,500 rupees in Telangana?
06:54Why did Aamadmi Party promise 1,000 rupees in Punjab?
06:56And none of the places they have actually done.
06:58Our model is women empowerment which starts from 2000, year 2000.
07:03Whether it's Gujarat CM Modi Ji, whether it's Bihar CM Nitish Ji, whether it is Madhya Pradesh CM Srivraj Ji,
07:09all of them started the schemes, beti bachau schemes, schemes to empower the women, to give them cycle, uniform, send them to school and ensure
07:17dropout rates are reduced, then give them participation in the public sector jobs, give them participation in police force,
07:22one-third of Bihar's police force is women police force, then to give the reservation at the central level in the parliament,
07:28then to give Jal Se Nal, Shochale Yojna, to give the houses in the name of women and now give them a certain sum, corpus,
07:35so that they can start their business and become the empowered women, Lakpati Didi.
07:38They want to make Misa Didi, they want to make Rohini Didi, they want to make Priyanka Didi, we want to make Lakpati Didi, so they blame us.
07:45Why do you think that Jan Swaraj was unable to open its account and ended up with a complete duck?
07:51Because this is a party which fought on development issues.
07:54Because this is a party which was in the media, not on the ground. And media wallahs have given them too much oxygen and in the reality there was nothing.
08:03So many times media hypes personalities who are nothing on the ground but because of the TRP and the advertisement issues, media highlights them and then there's nothing on the ground.
08:13He did more interviews than say party like H.A.M. or party like M.I.M. or party like I would say Upendra Khushwa, they have got more seats but they did not get the airtime.
08:25So it's all about media's projection but he was not on the ground and this has been seen by the vote share that he got.
08:32I think the media should be cautious about the next, you know, person they inflate and make the hero.
08:39Like Rahul Gandhi also last 21 years, some sections of media, they're trying to project him as leader but he didn't get it.
08:45From the Mukama seat, Anand Singh has won but right now he's in jail. He has won the elections, he has won the constituency. Do you think that NDA will ensure now to expedite the investigations?
08:56The very fact that he went to jail despite being our candidate shows that we are not interfering in the law and order situation, anybody 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 in 2013 and then he's made national president, that is Lalu Prasad Yadav.
09:17So I think that on the one hand there was a model where Aparad and Aparadis got state protection and then there was a model where Firothi was decided in the CM's house.
09:26And today even if it is our own, we don't hesitate in taking the case up even during the peak of elections.
09:32So this is the difference between the Kanun Ka Raj of NDA and Jangal Raj of Lalu Ji.
09:38This time around we saw that the highlight was the hospitals, the dire conditions of the hospitals in Bihar and of course the bridges in Bihar.
09:47Do you think that these issues which were highlighted during elections will be sorted?
09:53I think Bihar when it was handed over to the BJP JDU government, at that time there was less than 10,000 kilometers of rural roads.
10:02There was very few hospital beds and hospitals.
10:05There were very few colleges.
10:07There was complete chaos in law and order situation.
10:10Less than 10% of toilet and tap water coverage.
10:14Less than 25-30% of electricity coverage.
10:17Very little power generation.
10:19Lack of environment to create any kind of factories and industries.
10:23From there Bihar has been pulled up to a place where it has now got a GDP growth which is one of the fastest in the country.
10:31It has got a budget which has increased from just about 20,000 crores to 3 lakh crores.
10:36It has got a GDP size or size of economy which has grown from 70,000 crores to almost 9.5 lakh crores.
10:42It has got a road network of 1.5 lakh kilometers in rural areas.
10:45It has now got tap water and toilet correction of 100% almost.
10:49So we have taken up Bihar from a place where it was completely made into Bimaru and taken it to the path of Bemisar.
10:56Of course in this growth process there will be some areas where some of the infrastructure will not be as good or may suffer some issues.
11:04And that we are committed to fix.
11:06I think people have also given a message that there might be some issues and we don't deny that.
11:10But the best person to fix those issues is the NDA.
11:13And therefore the NDA will continue to do that.
11:15And now we will see new levels of growth and development in Bihar.
11:18Already you would be happy to know that there are 700 registered startups in Bihar.
11:23You would be happy to know that the sugar mill has started already, the Rida sugar mill.
11:28You would be happy to know that one of the biggest bottling plants of PepsiCo, which is Varun Baraj is in Baroni.
11:35You will be happy to know that majority of the big manufacturers of biscuit are operating out of Patna.
11:40So now many opportunities are being created and infrastructure will continue to be the dominating story of Bihar in 2025 to 2030.
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