In the wake of the Congress’s disappointing electoral understanding with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, an arrangement that failed to increase either party’s tally, the party’s State unit that met on Wednesday to review the poll results proposed that it should either tie-up with the Janata Dal (United) or go it alone in next year’s Assembly polls.
In return, the JD(U), which too was decimated in the recent general elections, has made overtures to the Congress. JD(U) sources said party supremo and former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was even willing to consider parting with one of the three Rajya Sabha seats it hoped to win in the forthcoming biennial polls to the Congress.
This is part of a growing closeness between the two parties: after the JD(U) walked out of the NDA in June last year, snapping its 17-year-old relationship with the BJP, the Congress’s four MLAs in the State backed the erstwhile Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.
Three Rajya Sabha seats from Bihar have fallen vacant after Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) president Ram Vilas Paswan, BJP general secretary Rajiv Pratap Rudy and former RJD leader Ram Kripal Yadav (now with the BJP) got elected to the Lok Sabha in the recent elections.
The JD(U) has the numbers in the State to win all three. Apart from JD(U) president Sharad Yadav and senior party Shakuni Choudhary, party sources said it was considering offering the third to Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed as an indication of its goodwill.
Mr. Ahmed, sources said, pushed for the Congress to support the JD(U) government in Bihar that was first led by Mr. Kumar and now Jitan Ram Manjhi.
RJD not fazed so farThe talks between the Congress and the JD(U) has thus far not fazed the RJD, at least publicly. Its supremo Lalu Prasad said recently that despite the disastrous results in the Lok Sabha elections, his party’s relationship with the Congress would continue.
The RJD won four Lok Sabha seats, just equalling its 2009 tally, while the Congress also repeated its score of just two – the only additional seat came via the Nationalist Congress Party – a partner. The JD(U) went from 20 in 2009 to just two, while the BJP, the LJP and the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party together won a whopping 31 of the 40 seats in the State.
For the Congress leadership, it may be hard to break with the RJD and befriend the JD(U); it will be equally difficult to get the RJD and the JD(U) to agree to be on the same political platform. But the writing on the wall after the recent general elections – the end of the era of non-Congress with the BJP making a spectacular showing all over the country – may force political parties like the RJD and the JD(U) to rethink their options. They were, after all, one party not that long ago.
