Patna: Senior Congress leader Pawan Khera on Wednesday hinted that the party was fine with RJD's Tejashwi Yadav as the INDIA bloc's chief ministerial face in the Bihar assembly polls, without explicitly declaring it.
Khera, who is the party's media and publicity department chief, spoke to journalists on the sidelines of the Congress Working Committee meeting here.
When asked about the reluctance of the Congress to declare Yadav as the CM face of the Mahagathbandhan, he replied, "We are contesting on issues. Faces are in front of you. All is known to everyone. You are asking a question, to which the answer is already known."
To a pointed query as to why the Congress, which had backed Yadav as the chief ministerial candidate in 2020, was shying away this time, he responded poetically, "When the Sun is shining bright in the sky, you do not need to declare it."
He also dismissed the claim of NDA leaders like Union minister Chirag Paswan that the CWC meeting was being held in Patna as a "show of strength to alliance partners in a state where the Congress is now viewed as a spent force".
"There is no show of strength among brothers," Khera said, with a rhetorical flourish.
Asked about seat-sharing arrangements in the INDIA bloc, which in Bihar includes CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI(M) and CPI, besides former minister Mukesh Sahni's Vikassheel Insan Party, Khera said, "All details will be shared soon."
When journalists persisted with queries about the meeting being held in Bihar "for the first time" since Independence, the Congress leader shot back, "Even vote theft has taken place for the first time."
"The BJP has been confident of retaining power just because it indulges in vote theft. And this arrogance of the ruling party has resulted in complacency about pressing problems like unemployment," Khera said.
"The CWC meeting here must not be looked at through the prism of elections in Bihar. The meeting is about the foundations of our democracy," he added.
(Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and auto-generated from an agency feed.)
