JD(U) shivir set to coincide with Modi`s rally

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is likely to be away in Rajgir where his party JD(U) will hold its `chintan shivir` when his bete noir Narendra Modi visits the city to address BJP`s `hunkar rally` in the last week of October.

While the date is yet to be known, Bihar JD(U) president Bashist Naryan Singh confirmed the holding of the `chintan shivir` in Rajgir at the time. "The precise date would be decided on later," he told a news agency and added that Nitish Kumar, all JD(U) MPs, MLAs and party office bearers would attend the shivir at Rajgir to chalk out strategy for the 2014 elections. Asked if the timing of the shivir was chosen to coincide with BJP`s rally, to be held at Gandhi Maidan here and addressed by BJP`s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Singh replied in the negative. "Our programme has not even a distant link with the BJP`s rally," he said. State JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar said the `chintan shivir` is part of the party programme for the 2014 parliamentary elections. "We have completed assembly constituency-wise meetings and from tomorrow we will start the district level meetings which will continue till October 3. Next will be the chintan shivir at Rajgir in the last week of October," he said. Preparations are on at a warfooting for the BJP rally which would be Narendra Modi`s first big programme in Nitish Kumar`s home turf after break up of 17-year-old relations between the two old NDA partners on June 16. Asked, state BJP general secretary Suraj Nandan Mehta said JD(U) had timed its chintan shivir in the last week of October out of fear. "The JD(U) shivir timing has been chosen deliberately out of fear of the sure grand success of BJP`s hunkar rally to be addressed by Narendra Modi," Mehta said. "It will not be chintan shivir of JD(U) but a chintit (worried) shivir of Nitish Kumar`s party," he said. PTI