New Delhi: The seat-sharing exercise between ruling allies Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Bihar assembly elections is unlikely to be a smooth one.
In a meeting held on 29 August with party chief J.P. Nadda, BJP MPs from Bihar have urged the central leadership to have a share equal to the JD(U)’s, and move on from the “big brother” attitude of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s party. The total strength of the Bihar assembly is 243 seats, while the number of Lok Sabha seats in the state is 40.
In last year’s Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and the JD(U) fought 17 seats each, while their third ally, Lok Janshakti Party, contested the remaining six.
“The BJP was gracious enough to part with 13 of the seats it had contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections to accommodate the JD(U) in the 2019 elections. However, things have changed substantially, and so has the BJP’s position in the state. All this needs to be reflected in the seat-sharing exercise,” a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
One of the MPs who attended the meeting added: “BJP had even let go of its traditional seats like Siwan, Gaya, Gopalganj and Valmiki Nagar, among others. Party workers and leaders will be demotivated if we once again don’t get a respectable share.”
Several MPs raised this issue at the meeting, and were told that a final decision will be taken by the party high command soon. The MPs have been asked to conduct 60 panchayat meetings and submit a report on the overall mood and the current situation in assembly constituencies to the central leadership.
“We have also been told to observe PM Modi’s birthday week as ‘seva saptah’ (service week) and reach out to the people in terms of food distribution, and organising blood camps, etc.,” said a third BJP leader.
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Why seat-sharing has become an issue
The key reason why seat-sharing has become a concern for the ruling allies is that six Rashtriya Janata Dal MLAs have recently switched to the JD(U), leading to questions about how they will be accommodated. All six had won from seats contested by the BJP or LJP in 2015, as the RJD and JD(U) had fought the elections together with the Congress against the BJP-led NDA.
There is also speculation that former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi, whose Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) has also broken its alliance with the RJD, will join the NDA and take up some seats. LJP president Chirag Paswan has also been aggressively pitching for more seats.
“HAM has quit the grand alliance and is likely to join the NDA. Bihar BJP and the party functionaries are hopeful that BJP and JD(U) will contest on 105 seats each, with 33 being left for LJP. As far as HAM is concerned, we hope JD(U) will accommodate it from its own quota,” said a fourth BJP leader.
Track record
The BJP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) have contested elections as allies for most of the last two decades, barring the 2015 assembly polls when Nitish allied with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD and the Congress.
In 2005, JD(U) and BJP had fought on 139 and 102 seats, winning 88 and 55 respectively.
Then, in 2010, the JD(U) contested 141 seats and won 115, while the BJP contested 102 seats and won 91.
In the 2015 elections, the NDA seat-sharing arrangement gave the BJP 157 seats, the LJP 42, the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party 23 and HAM 21. However, the BJP won just 53 seats, the LJP and the RLSP won two each while the HAM could win just one, as the ‘mahagathbandhan’ romped to power.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the JD(U) had contested alone and won only two seats, while the BJP, in an alliance with the RLSP and the LJP, won 31 out of 40 seats.
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