With few months to go for the Bihar Assembly elections, the BJP chief JP Nadda on Sunday said that the party will fight the election under the leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Nadda was addressing the party’s Bihar working committee via video conferencing. He expressed confidence in the alliance of BJP, JD (U) and LJP in the state and said, “We will fight Bihar polls together and emerge victoriously.”

He reiterated the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atma Nirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) call and said, “Package of Rs 20 lakh crore was allotted under the scheme out of which Rs 3 crore was allotted for MSME sector and Rs 1 lakh crore for agricultural infrastructure.”

He also emphasised on PPM’s Vocal for Local initiative and said, “In Bihar, we have to take forward the Makhana industry, Madhubani painting, and Bhagalpur’s Silk industry in a push for PM Modi’s local for vocal initiative.”

“Litchi of Muzaffarpur, honey of Madhubani, we all have to pursue under self-reliant India,” he added.

“We now have 12,50,000 dedicated beds and more than 2,000 COVID-19 treatment facilities. We have achieved a testing capacity of 10 lakhs a day. The recovery rate has reached 74 per cent in the country,” Nadda said.

He congratulated the state government for conducting one lakh tests and 10 crore door to door screenings.

Elections in the state are due in October-November. However, the Election Commission has not taken any final call on the poll dates yet.

On Friday, the Election Commission of India has released guidelines for the conduct of the elections.

As per the guidelines, a maximum of 1,000 voters can be present at any polling booth at a time, and every voter’s body temperature will be checked before the person is allowed to enter the booth. Further, the voters whose body temperature is found to be more than the safe threshold set by the Health Ministry will be checked twice, and if the result remains the same, then they will be asked to visit again in the last hour of polling.

“At the last hour of poll, such electors shall be facilitated voting, strictly following COVID-19 related preventive measures,” the Election Commission said in its latest guidelines.

The Commission has revised the norms of number of persons accompanying the candidate and number of vehicles at the time of nomination. It has also created optional facility to fill the nomination form and the affidavit online and submission of the same, after taking print, before the RO concerned.

For the first time, the candidates will have the option to deposit security amount for contesting the elections online. Keeping the containment guidelines in view, the Commission has limited the number of persons including candidate for door to door campaign to five.