New Delhi, Oct 2 (IANS) Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is not likely to campaign in Bihar as he does not figure in the list of campaigners submitted to the Election Commission by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), party sources said Friday.
According to the sources, Modi’s name does not figure in the name of 40 campaigners of the party given to the Election Commission.
The list includes senior party leaders L.K. Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Ananth Kumar, the sources said.
Senior party leaders from Bihar including Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, party spokespersons Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Shahnawaz Hussain and state party chief C. P. Thakur also figure in the list of BJP campaigners.
Though the BJP leaders refused to comment on the issue, Modi’s name has apparently not been included in dereference to the wishes of Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar.
After Nitish Kumar took strong exception to his photographs with Modi in newspaper advertisements during the BJP’s national executive meeting in Patna in June, several JD-U leaders had demanded that the Gujarat chief minister should not campaign in the state in the assembly polls.
The BJP has officially maintained that it was for the party to chose who among its leaders will campaign in Bihar.
The six-phased polls in Bihar begins on October 21.
