The BJP, which was waiting for the announcement of the >Bihar Assembly election schedule before finalising its seat-sharing arrangements with its NDA partners, has got down to brass tacks, with some help from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Top sources in the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) led by Upendra Kushwaha and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) confirmed to The Hindu that the Prime Minister spoke to both alliance partners and especially told Mr. Kushwaha, who is Minister of State for Human Resources Development in his Cabinet, to go with the BJP’s plans on >seat-sharing . “There was a departmental presentation and meeting at the PMO last evening [on Tuesday evening], when Prime Minister Modi took Upendraji aside and told him to go with whatever BJP president Amit Shah had decided on seat-sharing among NDA partners,” said an RLSP source. “He said that our [NDA] alliance should fight strongly and unitedly,” the source added.
While Mr. Kushwaha had been demanding 67 of the 243 seats in Bihar, the BJP is in no mood to give him more than 20. Ram Vilas Paswan of the LJP too was sent the same message.
On Wednesday, Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister and Bihar co-in charge Ananth Kumar, who held a series of meetings at his residence, was informed by Shivraj Singh, RLSP general secretary, that his party was willing to go along with the seat-sharing arrangement finalised by Mr. Shah. Mr. Kumar, sources said, also intervened in the growing feud between Mr. Paswan and former Bihar Chief Minister and now leader of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), Jiten Ram Manjhi.
A high decibel battle is expected between the BJP-LJP-RSLP combine and the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance in Bihar
Constituencies | 243 |
Reserved for SCs | 38 |
Reserved for STs | 2 |
No. of electors | 6.68 crore |
No. of polling stations | 62,779 |
No. of polling stations where paper trails will be piloted | 36 |
47 constituencies in the poll-bound state are hit by Naxal violence
