BJP national president J.P. Nadda with Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva, Union MoS Harsh Malhotra and party MP Manoj Tiwari during the ‘Bihar Diwas 2025’ function, in New Delhi, on March 29, 2025.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda on Saturday (March 29, 2025) said that it was the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Bihar, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government at the Centre, that saw the State come out of the “darkness” that the “jungle raj” under former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad had plunged the State into.
He was addressing a Bihar Divas programme organised by the Delhi BJP’s Purvanchal Morcha here. Lauding the State, Mr. Nadda said that Bihar had a “special aura and dynamism”. “Bihar has given democracy to the world, and Nalanda and Vikramshila as great places of learning,” the Minister said.
Even in modern times, students from Bihar studied in large numbers at Delhi University colleges, and many professors from the State were known globally for their academic prowess, he said.
“Around the 1970s, Bihar was a progressing State. It turned into doobta (declining) Bihar under Lalu raj. It was difficult to venture out in the evenings in Patna in those times,” he said, referring to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) rule under Mr. Lalu Prasad’s chief ministership during the 1990s.
He said doctors had been forced to escape the State, and new vehicles were taken out forcefully from showrooms for wedding parties. In a dig at RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Mr. Nadda said some people claimed there was no “jungle raj” in Bihar because they “were not born at that time”.
Mr. Nadda lauded the Delhi BJP and its Purvanchal Morcha workers for ensuring the BJP’s victory in the recently concluded Assembly election. He called on them to join campaigning in Bihar as well, where the Assembly election are due later this year.
Listing Bihar’s progress under the NDA and the Modi government, Mr. Nadda said that Bihar had just 384 km of rural roads in 2005, which had now expanded to over 1.12 lakh kilometres.
He cited the setting up of the Indian Institute of Technology, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Bihar, and announced that Patna Medical College was going to be the biggest hospital in Asia.
Published – March 29, 2025 06:36 pm IST