Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday met Rahul Gandhi at his residence as talks on alliance to take on BJP in Bihar polls gained momentum.
RJD Chief Lalu Prasad also said he will be meeting leaders on the alliance issue.
JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav, who had on Thursday asserted that RJD, JD-U and Congress will fight the Bihar Assembly polls together, is already back in the national capital having rounds of negotiations with leaders of other parties in Bihar.
The top leaders of RJD and JD(U) are expected to hold back to back meetings in the national capital to weed out differences. The leaders are likely to hold a meeting at the residence of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as well.
The SP chief was chosen by the six splinter groups of the Janta Parivar, including these parties, to work out their grand merger plan to take on a resurgent BJP, which has made deep inroads into their vote banks in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and even Haryana.
The Bihar Chief Minister’s meeting with Mr. Gandhi lasted for over an hour as they discussed the “political situation” in the state amidst talks for a broader “secular alliance” to take on BJP gained momentum.
Mr. Kumar and RJD Chief Prasad later met SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav to discuss the Bihar alliance.
Mr. Kumar, who had arrived in New Delhi on Saturday, drove down to the Congress vice-president's residence even as RJD chief Lalu Prasad reached the national capital amidst renewed efforts to work out a broader rainbow coalition against BJP in the crucial Hindi-belt state ahead of the polls later this year.
JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav, who had on Thursday asserted that RJD, JD(U) and Congress will fight the Bihar Assembly polls together, did not accompany Kumar for the meeting with Gandhi, which lasted for over an hour.
The discussion with Mr. Gandhi, which took place ahead of a meeting between the leaders of RJD and JD(U) at the residence of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, is being seen as an attempt to show that Mr. Kumar is the preferred choice of Congress.
This comes just days after a bitter war of words between leaders of JD(U) and RJD amidst speculation that the RJD chief was not keen to project Mr. Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance.
When the face-off intensified between the two parties a few days back, Congress had made it clear that while it is keen that the proposed grand alliance include both Lalu and Kumar, it will side with the latter in case the two fail to come together.
Congress is keen to see the march of BJP halted in Bihar as it feels that a second successive defeat after Delhi polls will take away from a perception of the invincibility of BJP under Narendra Modi. That could prove damaging to BJP in future state elections, including in Uttar Pradesh, where it had made deep inroads in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Congress leaders feel.
Meanwhile, Mr. Prasad has said that in Delhi he will be meeting with leaders on the alliance question. He had on Saturday hit out at BJP and RSS for speculating over his party’s tie-up with JD(U) for the Bihar elections and said they were “more worried about the alliance” owing to “fear of defeat.”
Mr. Mulayam has also reached Delhi and had a word with the JD(U) president who met him at his residence.
A JD(U) leader speaking on the condition of anonymity said that he is confident that the alliance could be announced as soon as today itself after the meeting of Prasad, Nitish and Sharad at the residence of the SP chief.
The issue of merger of the six parties is for the time being slowed down with the focus shifting on first firming up the alliance for Bihar.
