00:00Joining us today is Shahzad Poonawala, the National Spokesperson of the Bhartia Janta 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 Sushasan and Ram Raj, not with General Raj.
00:37The opposition had this criticism for the India Alliance that BGP 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.
00:54So we are all, we are all fighting as the paanj pandals. We are the five brothers who fought together.
01:00In their alliance, in fact, there was no mission or vision. There was only confusion, ambition for position and apna apna division.
01:07And therefore, you saw that till the last minute, they did not announce who the face is.
01:11Till 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.
01:27But 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.
01:39Shahzad, you mentioned Chirag Paswan. In 2020, he got just one seat and this time around, he got 19 seats out of 29.
01:47Why 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.
01:56No, 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.
02:19Let 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.
02:32The 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.
02:43Some in the opposition are also saying that you will keep Nitish Kumar at the helm for a couple of years and then we will 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 Nitish Kumar Ji is finished.
02:58One person said that if Nitish Ji has 25 seats, I will leave Rajniti.
03:03Then one person has said that Nitish Ji's health is not good.
03:07One person has commented on the mental state of Nitish Ji.
03:10All 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.
03:25They have lost even the bastions that they considered to be their own, which is the bastions in the Muslim dominated and the other dominated welts.
03:33Even there the NDA has performed well.
03:34Out 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?
03:54I think the bomb self detonated, but it's not detonated for the first time in the hands of Rahul Gandhi.
04:00This 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.
04:11An 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.
04:23For example, in Maharashtra, they came after the Maharashtra election.
04:27After 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. They 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 Vipakshini parties.
05:20And that DBT is Dynasty, Brashtachar and Tushti Karan.
05:24And part of this dynasty, Brashtachar and Tushti Karan 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.
05:33We 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 8pm, she gets raped and then the state machinery starts blaming the woman.
05:46RG Karan incident took place.
05:48We saw the Sandesh Kali incident where Shah Jahshek was responsible for the rapes.
05:51There is unprecedented corruption.
05:53Bags 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 and on the other hand, even the women, Maa, Maati, 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.
06:18So it is complete Jungle Raj and just like Ganga flows from Bihar to Bengal, the Ganga of Vikas and Sushasana and good governance also has to flow from Bihar to Bengal.
06:28But Shahzad, this DBT model of BJP is being criticised 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 it?
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.
06:58Imran, our model is women empowerment, which starts from 2000, year 2000.
07:03Whether its Gujarat CM Modi ji, whether it's Bihar CM Nitish Ji , whether it's Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj ji, all of them started the schemes,
07:11Beti Bachao schemes, schemes to empower the women, to give them cycle, uniform, send them to school ensure dropout rates are reduced.
07:18Then give them participation in the public sector jobs, give them participation in police force.
07:22One-third of Bihar's police force is women's police force.
07:24is 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,
07:32and now give them a certain sum, corpus, so that they can start their business
07:36and become the empowered women Lakpati didi. They want to make Mesa didi, they want to make Rohini didi,
07:41they want to make Priyanka didi, we want to make Lakpati didi, so they blame us.
07:46Why 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,
07:59and mediawallas 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 TRP and the advertisement
08:10issues, media highlights them, and then there's nothing on the ground. He did more interviews than
08:14a party like H.A.M. or a party like M.I.M. or a party like Upendra Khushwa, they have got more seats,
08:24but they did not get the airtime. So it's all about media's projection, but he was not on the ground,
08:30and this has been seen by the vote share that he got. I think the media should be cautious about the next
08:36you know, person they inflate and make the hero. Like Rahul Gandhi also last 21 years, some sections of media,
08:42they're trying to project him as leader, but it's not done.
08:45From the Mukama seat, Anand Singh has won, but right now he's in jail. He has won the elections,
08:51he has won the constituency. Do you think that NDA will ensure now to expedite the investigations?
08:57The very fact that he went to jail despite being our candidate shows that we are not interfering in
09:01the law and order situation. Anybody has done a crime, then the law and order will take over.
09:07There will be a full process of law. We are not like the RJD, shameless, that the person is convicted
09:12five times, and first time he's convicted in 2013, and then he's made national president,
09:17that is Lalu Prasad Yadav. So I think that on the one hand, there was a model where
09:21Aparad and Aparadis got state protection, and then there was a model where Firoti was decided in the
09:26CM's house. And today, even if it is our own, we don't hesitate in taking the case up, even during the
09:32peak of elections. So this is the difference between the Kanun Ka Raj of NDA and Jangal Raj of Laluji.
09:39This time around, we saw that the highlight was the hospitals, the dire conditions of the hospitals
09:44in Bihar, and of course, the bridges in Bihar. Do you think that these issues which were highlighted
09:50during elections will be sorted? I think Bihar, when it was handed over to the BJP JDU government,
09:59at that time, there was less than 10,000 kilometers of rural roads, there was very few hospital beds
10:05and hospitals, there were very few colleges, there was complete chaos in law and order situation,
10:11less than 10% of toilet and tap water coverage, less than 25-30% of electricity coverage,
10:18very little power generation, lack of environment to create any kind of factories and industries.
10:24From there, Bihar has been pulled up to a place where it has now got a GDP growth which is one of
10:30the fastest in the country. It has got a budget which has increased from just about 20,000 crores
10:35to 3 lakh crores. It has got a GDP size or size of economy which has grown from 70,000 crores
10:40to almost 9.5 lakh crores. It has got a road network of 1.5 lakh kilometers in rural areas.
10:46It has now got tap water and toilet correction of 100% almost. So, we have taken up Bihar from a
10:52place where it was completely made into Bimaru and taken it to the path of Bemisar. Of course,
10:57in this growth 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 that
11:08there might be some issues and we don't deny that, but the best person to fix those issues is the NDA.
11:14And therefore, the NDA will continue to do that. And now, we will see new levels of growth and
11:18development in Bihar. 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, the Rida sugar mill. You would be
11:29happy to know that one of the biggest bottling plants of PepsiCo, which is Varun Baraj is in Baroni.
11:36You will be happy to know that the majority of the big manufacturers of Biscuit are operating out
11:40of 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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