New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to contest one seat more than its alliance partner, the Janata Dal (United) — 17 and 16 Lok Sabha seats respectively — as part of the seat-sharing formula worked out by the partners of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar, ThePrint has learnt.
In 2019, the BJP and the JD(U) had contested 17 seats each. The BJP won all the seats while the JDU lost one. In the latest alliance, the BJP contesting one more seat than the JD(U) has a largely symbolic significance as it’s likely to be seen as the end of Nitish Kumar’s ‘big brother’ stature in the alliance. Symbolism aside, given that Nitish was forced to join hands with the BJP for fear of defections by his party MPs, his ability to retain all 16 seats is seen as his ‘success’ in holding his fort.
According to a senior BJP leader, after several rounds of discussion, the party is likely to contest in 17 seats, chief minister Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United) in 16 and the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) in five seats. Bihar sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha.
In 2019, the BJP, JD(U) and undivided LJP had contested the Lok Sabha elections together, with six seats coming in the LJP’s quota. In all, the coalition had won 39 out of the total 40 seats in Bihar, a performance it wants to repeat.
This time, no Lok Sabha seats have been allocated to the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) led by Paswan’s uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras — a party that is an NDA member and currently has five MPs in the House. Paswan is likely to contest in Paras’s own seat and Paras may be offered a Rajya Sabha seat, according to BJP sources.
Of the remaining seats, the BJP wants to give one to Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha and one to Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), according to another BJP leader.
Although Kushwaha has demanded two seats, the BJP is trying to persuade him to accept one.
The Muzaffarpur seat, part of the BJP’s quota and currently held by it, may be allocated to another party that is expected to join the alliance — the Vikassheel Insaan Party VIP. In that case, the seat will be given to the VIP’s chief, Mukesh Sahani, a leader of the Nishad (fishermen) community in Bihar.
While the number of seats for each of the NDA partners has been fixed, there are still some loose ends that have to be finalised, including the switching of seats between the JD(U) and BJP. An official announcement regarding the seat distribution is likely to be made in the next few days.
There is, however, grumbling in the BJP about conceding “too many seats” to JDU. But a senior Bihar BJP leader said that several neutral voters will tilt towards the NDA with Nitish’s return to the alliance. “Without Nitish Kumar, our vote percentage worked out to be around 37-38 percent. With Nitish Kumar, the vote percentage creeps to over 50 percent again and we will either repeat the 2019 Lok Sabha poll results in Bihar or come close to it,” the leader added.
The BJP leadership in Bihar says that without Nitish, they may have fallen 7 to 10 seats short of the 2019 results in which the NDA’s vote percentage was 52 percent and around 22 percent more than that of the then Mahagathbandhan. “Therefore, even before Nitish joined the NDA, JD(U) staked claim of 16 seats and the BJP leadership did not dispute the claim,” said the BJP leader quoted earlier.
The other victor in the seat distribution is definitely Chirag Paswan, who managed not only to get five seats in the NDA alliance but also got back at his uncle and Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras by ensuring that his uncle’s faction of the LJP did not get a single seat. In the 2019 polls, the LJP got 6 seats. This time, Chirag has only conceded his old seat Khagaria to the NDA alliance, while he himself contests from Hajipur and leaves four other LJP MPs who had switched over to Paras during the split in 2021 ticketless.
Uncle vs nephew
In a post on social media Wednesday, Chirag Paswan wrote that the seat sharing had been finalised in a meeting with BJP national president J.P. Nadda.
As a member of the NDA, today in a meeting with BJP National President Hon Shri @jpnadda ji, we have together finalised the seat sharing in Bihar for the ensuing Lok Sabha polls.
The same will be announced in due course.
एनडीए के सदस्य के रूप में आज भाजपा के राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष… pic.twitter.com/hpAQNC5HKo
— युवा बिहारी चिराग पासवान (@iChiragPaswan) March 13, 2024
A number of meetings took place over the past few days to give final shape to the seat distribution, with JP Nadda holding closed-door meetings with Paswan, which were also attended by former state BJP president Mangal Pandey.
According to a source, Paswan, currently the MP for Jamui, is likely to contest from the Hajipur constituency now held by his uncle, Paras.
This appears to indicate that the BJP has acknowledged Paswan and not his uncle as the claimant to the political legacy of his father, the late Ram Vilas Paswan. Hajipur was Ram Vilas Paswan’s citadel and his brother, Paras, was elected to represent the seat in 2019.
“There is a likelihood that Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, Chirag Paswan’s uncle, might be given a Rajya Sabha seat,” said a party functionary.
After infighting broke out within the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) — a party that Ram Vilas Paswan founded in 2000 — five of six LJP MPs in the Lok Sabha ousted Chirag Paswan and elected his uncle, Paras, as the chief of the party in June 2021.
“My family was broken. My party was broken but I did not break”, Chirag Paswan had said at a public rally in Vaishali district last Sunday.
The Election Commission of India had allocated separate names and symbols to the two warring leaders’ parties. The EC allocated the name ‘LJP (Ram Vilas)’ and ‘the helicopter’ symbol to Paswan while Paras’s faction was given the name ‘Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party’, with the ‘sewing machine’ symbol. There’s currently a freeze on the LJP’s name and election symbol.
‘Lot of calculation’
Former MLC Prem Kumar Mani, who was among the “think tanks” of Nitish Kumar during his Samata Party days, said: “There is a lot of calculation by BJP behind giving 16 seats to Nitish Kumar. Not only have they given a blow to the INDIA alliance by taking away its founder, they have realized that as long as Nitish is with the INDIA alliance, there is a possibility of the alliance winning 11 to 12 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. But without Nitish, the alliance is back to around 30 percent votes they got in the 2019 polls.”
He added: “The BJP does not want to repeat the 2015 mistake of allowing voters of Lalu and Nitish joining hands and receiving a drubbing in assembly polls. The BJP knows that the existence of JD(U) is for a limited time. When JD(U) is out of the political scenario of Bihar, the BJP wants the vote bank of Nitish to come to it.”
Two of the NDA’s allies, Jitan Ram Manjhi and Upendra Kushwaha, were with the Grand alliance in 2019. The two leaders have pockets of influence over the Mushar section of Dalits and Kushwahas respectively. They are with the NDA this time and will contest one seat each. With the AIMIM announcing that they will contest 11 seats, the defection of Nitish Kumar, Manjhi and Kushwaha, the NDA looks strong in Bihar again.
This is an updated version of the report.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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