Patna: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress find themselves in a similar predicament in Bihar as their much-smaller regional allies drive a hard bargain ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
Members of the BJP, which won 22 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, fear that its alliance in the state may prove too costly, with partners Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Janata Dal (United) said to be eyeing some of the saffron party’s most prized constituencies.
The fear is of a different nature for the Congress. The party notched all of two seats in both the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections, but wants to contest from 15 constituencies this time, a demand that is said to have miffed Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad.
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‘Hope Nitish delivers’
The JD(U) of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had not been a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, which came during their four-year split between 2013 and 2017.
While the BJP had contested the election with the LJP of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) of Upendra Kushwaha, the JD(U) had gone solo. The RLSP quit the NDA last year.
Under the seat-sharing agreement worked out by the three NDA allies this year, the BJP and JD(U) will each contest 17 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats, with the remaining six going to the LJP. The candidates are yet to be finalised.
Even as the negotiations on seats continue, there is said to be much heartburn among local members over the JD(U) and LJP’s quest to bag BJP strongholds, including Union Minister Giriraj Singh’s Nawada constituency.
Nawada has voted for a BJP candidate for two consecutive elections, besides two earlier wins in 1996 and 1999, but is now being sought by the LJP.
“The LJP agreed to give Munger, where it won in 2014, to the JD(U) and staked claim to Nawada, which is represented by Union Minister Giriraj Singh,” said a senior BJP leader, stressing that Nawada had been a saffron stronghold even during the Jan Sangh days.
“Giriraj sulked and did not even come to the NDA rally in Gandhi Maidan on 3 March. We have to shift him to Begusarai and Giriraj needed a lot of persuasion to agree,” the senior leader added.
According to the senior leader, the LJP had also refused to give the Khagaria parliamentary seat to the BJP’s Samrat Choudhary, a member of Bihar’s influential Kushwaha caste.
“We will not have any seat where we can field a Kushwaha caste candidate. It is a section of OBC that has a large presence in Bihar, and a community we have been trying to woo for the past three years,” the leader added.
In 2014, the JD(U) had won only two seats. When it returned to the NDA fold, it was widely believed that Nitish’s seat share would stay in the single digits.
However, after talks with Nitish, PM Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah agreed to give the JD(U) an equal number of seats, though it would have meant reducing the RLSP and LJP’s share.
In this arrangement, the RLSP was being offered two seats — one down from 2014, when it won all the three seats it contested — and the LJP six, again one less than its 2014 share, when it won six of seven seats contested, with the BJP offering Paswan a Rajya Sabha seat for succour.
“The result was that Upendra Kushwaha, our ally, was virtually thrown out of the NDA and he joined the Grand Alliance (comprising the Congress, RJD and others),” said a BJP MP.
But this is not the only “sacrifice” the BJP has made to keep Nitish by their side: The party itself has slashed its seat share to 17, even though it won 22 seats [out of 30 contested] in 2014, foiling the chances of another nomination for at least four sitting MPs, from Valmikinagar, Gopalganj, Siwan and Jhanjharpur.
Even then, a senior BJP leader told ThePrint, the JD(U) is “arm-twisting” the party to vacate some of its bastions, including Ara, currently represented by Union minister R.K. Singh, and Aurangabad, held by S.K. Singh for two consecutive terms [the first of those on a JD(U) ticket], and Darbhanga, whose three-term BJP MP Kirti Azad joined the Congress this year.
“I hope Nitish delivers after the BJP has agreed to most of his demands,” the senior leader added.
Also read: Will win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, says CM Nitish Kumar
When Congress miffed Lalu
Meanwhile, the Congress and the RJD seem to have finalised their seat-sharing arrangement after a bitter process that is said to have brought the long-term allies on the brink of a break-up.
“The seat-sharing agreement is nearly complete,” said Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee president Madan Mohan Jha.
“We only have to discuss two seats, one each for the CPI and the CPI-ML. The actual seat-sharing formula will be disclosed on 16 March [Saturday],” Jha told ThePrint Thursday.
The Congress was said to have left the RJD miffed with its demand for 15 of Bihar’s 40 seats, against the latter’s offer of seven. In the 2014 election, the RJD had contested 27 seats and won four, while the Congress wrested two of 12.
“Laluji was very angry at Congress president Rahul Gandhi for demanding seats far beyond the strength of the national party in Bihar,” said a former Union minister of the RJD, referring to a telephone conversation with Lalu Prasad, who is currently in judicial custody in Ranchi.
The two parties, sources said, have now agreed to set aside 11 seats for the Congress, four less than what they wanted.
Explaining the agreement, the RJD leader added, “We would like to avoid the Congress contesting independently, because that would threaten our hold on Muslim votes.”
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