Ending speculations, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad on Saturday declared that the Samajwadi Party had been given five seats to contest the Bihar Assembly elections. Earlier, the SP State unit had said the party had submitted a list of 12 seats to the RJD and both the parties had reached an agreement over it.
“We’ve given five seats to the SP. Now it is also a part of the grand alliance along with my own party the RJD, the JD(U) and the Congress,” said Mr. Prasad.
Under the seat-sharing arrangement, both the RJD and the JD(U) had got 100 seats each while 40 seats were given to the Congress and three were left for the National Congress Party, which refused to be a part of the grand alliance in Bihar.
Sources told The Hindu that Mr. Prasad had a meeting with Kiranmay Nanda, an emissary of SP chief Mulayam Singh on Friday and offered him five seats.
Later, Mr. Nanda left for Delhi to discuss the offer with Mr. Singh. The SP Parliamentary Board would meet on August 30 at Lucknow and “the final decision on the seat-sharing formula would be taken at that meeting,” said an SP source.
Bihar SP chief Ramchandra Singh Yadav said: “We are now waiting for the final call on this by our party supremo Mulayam Singh. Later we will take a decision whether to be a part of the grand alliance in Bihar or not.”
