Patna: The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is battling hard to unseat the Janata Dal United (JD-U) government in Bihar headed by chief minister Nitish Kumar, on Saturday promised to provide free fuel to go with the scooters it had earlier said would be given out to academic high-achievers should its government come to power in the state.

The five-phase Bihar elections will begin on October 12 and conclude on November 5. The counting of votes will be held on November 8.

“We will also provide free petrol for scootys for two years in case the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance [NDA] government forms its government in Bihar,” senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told the media on Saturday.

Modi, a former deputy chief minister in the erstwhile NDA government in the state, is considered to be the frontrunner in the BJP to be chief minister should the party win in Bihar.

“If we have decided to give scootys, then nobody needs to bother from where fuel will come to them? We will also give petrol to those whom the scooty will be given,” Modi said.

The announcement comes after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar lampooned the BJP’s election promise of giving scooters to girls who shone in their studies and sought to know: “Scootys are okay but who will give the fuel to run the two-wheelers?”

Free scootys and laptops for meritorious students featured prominently in the BJP’s “vision document” unveiled by federal finance minister Arun Jaitely on Thursday. The BJP has declared that it will give out 5,000 free scooters to girls and 50,000 free laptops to boys who excel in their class 10 and 12 examinations every year. The election promises are clearly aimed at the vast youth segment in the electorate, who account for some 30 per cent of the total number of voters in the state.

Young voters had played a key role in voting the NDA to power in last year’s Lok Sabha elections and the BJP again seems to be reaching out to this particular class by making such populist announcements ahead of the state polls.

The idea is said to be a counter to Kumar’s scheme of free cycles and stipends for meritorious students enrolled in government schools. The Nitish Kumar government claims to have given more than 1.6 million cycles to 828,347 boys and 815,837 girls so far under the free cycle scheme this year, which, it claims, is the biggest achievement of the government.