The Congress is inclined to form an alliance with the Janata Dal (United) in Bihar, ignoring the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s attempts to drive a hard bargain in a broader coalition against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the State that goes to the polls in October.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will meet soon for exploratory talks, according to Congress sources. Mr. Gandhi, who always had a preference for Mr. Kumar over Mr. Prasad as an ally, is in a mood to act on it this time, these sources said.
Mr. Prasad wants the RJD and the Congress to jointly bargain with Mr. Kumar for seats, but the Congress will not fall for it, said a party leader. The Congress feels Mr. Prasad arm-twisted into accepting an unfair share of seats in 2004, 2009 and 2014.
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Arithmetically, the vote shares of the RJD and the JD (U) add up to above 40 per cent, surpassing the BJP’s. But the RJD chief Lalu Prasad comes with the legacy of collapsed governance under his watch for 14 years until he was defeated in 2004, and Mr. Kumar fears his key selling point of good governance could be undermined in such an alliance.
Mr Kumar will therefore have to choose between the arithmetic advantage that an alliance with Mr. Prasad promises and the perceptional disadvantage that it portends. “That is going to be a difficult call for Nitishji,” an associate of Mr. Kumar told The Hindu . The Congress, while clearly favouring an alliance with the JD (U), is also mindful of the vacillating equations between the erstwhile partners in the Janata Parivar. “We have to also see what is the deal between JD (U) and the RJD if there is one,” said C. P. Joshi, AICC General Secretary in charge of Bihar.