Suspense continued over the on-again, off-again alliance between the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal with RJD chief Lalu Prasad maintaining on Tuesday that the two parties had not reached any final understanding.
“We have offered 11 seats to the Congress and 1 to the Nationalist Congress Party. We are firm on that offer. We have no information whether the Congress has accepted our offer. It’s wrong to say that we have reached an electoral understanding to we have reached a final decision. Our talks with the Congress are still going on. We may consider increasing our offer to the Congress by one seat if there is a difficulty for their candidate. We won’t squabble over one seat,” Mr. Prasad told reporters at his residence.
He was responding to reports the parties had finalised their seat-sharing talks.
Mr. Prasad termed the reports false and mischievous.
Earlier in the day, he met Kerala Governor Nikhil Kumar in Patna. Congress and RJD sources confirmed that Mr. Kumar was likely to contest from the Aurangabad Lok Sabha seat, in which case he would submit his resignation. The parties denied that Mr. Kumar was planning to switch to the RJD camp.
