Bihar elections: BJP allies continue to haggle over seats

NEW DELHI: The BJP continued talks with individual alliance partners to settle seat-sharing for the Bihar assembly polls, even of the allies continued to bargain for more seats.

Union minister and RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha met senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar and Bhupender Yadav for the second time in two days and later the RLSP leader showed his frustration by issuing a public letter to BJP chief Amit Shah seeking ‘fair’ distribution of seats.

Later in the day, HAM leader Jitan Ram Manjhi flew back to the capital for another meeting with Ananth Kumar. They both had met on Wednesday. Sources in NDA confided that BJP’s allies were jostling to garner maximum number of seats from the 83 BJP is ready to share with them.

NDA sources said that Ram Vilas Paswan was seeking maximum seats among the allies, while RLSP wanted ‘parity’ so that RLSP does not appear to be ceding ground to LJP in perception.

It is in this backdrop that Manjhi sought to leverage his ‘state-wide appeal’ to seek seats to match his stature.

While the negotiations continued, there were indications that LJP may bag around 40 assembly seats while RLSP may get little under 30 seats.

Manjhi is bargaining hard to get more than 13 seats for his current MLAs. With election schedules announced, the NDA was working overtime to finalise the deal.