Bihar: Congress MLAs in Touch with BJP, JDU

PATNA: For the grand old party, alarm bells have started ringing in Bihar as well.

The Congress, which is passing through extreme turbulence with some MLAs quitting the party in Gujarat and it trying hard to keep the rest with it, now faces the risk of losing a few in the eastern state.

As many as nine of the 27 Congress MLAs in Bihar have contacted the newly formed JDU-BJP alliance, sources said. According to people in the BJP, a couple of Congress MLAs had spoken to the senior leadership of the BJP in Bihar, while the rest of them were in talks with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal(U).

The Congress had fought the 2015 assembly election in partnership with the JDU and Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal. According to political observers, the number of seats the Congress won then doesn’t present the real picture — the party got 27 seats because of its alliance with two major parties in the state. It had won just four in 2010.

“Congress MLAs are now the most vulnerable here. They are a dwindling number nationally. They are feeling insecure,” said a senior BJP leader.