NDA to announce Bihar polls seat sharing any moment

NEW DELHI: Putting an end to fortnight long tussle over seat sharing, the BJP-led NDA is all set to announce their seat sharing agreement today at 1 pm.

The formal talks for seat sharing began with a meeting of leaders of Bihar NDA constituents at BJP president Amit Shah’s residence on August 31.

Union Minister and senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar, who is made part in-charge of Bihar elections, with two rounds of meetings with individual NDA leaders – Ram Vilas Paswan, Upendra Kushwaha and Jitan Ram Manjhi – over seat sharing.

However, things got entangled once it appeared to the NDA constituents that the BJP was unwilling to cede much ground to them and was trying to limit them by putting smaller parties against each other. As the individual parties started flexing muscle, the BJP managed to extract a written commitment from Paswan and Kushwaha leaving it to the BJP chief to finalise a "fair" seat-sharing agreement.

However, realizing that his fledgling HAM party may be given a raw deal, former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi went public with his frustration. First he trained his guns against LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and asserted himself as leader with a bigger Dalit followers. While the BJP stepped into to check this public display of acrimony among the alliance partners, Manjhi started to drive a hard bargain with the BJP.

A series of cajoling by senior BJP leaders like Ananth Kumar, Dharmendra Pradhan and Bupender Yadav that Manjhi seems to have relented today by exchanging sweets at BJP president Amit Shah’s residence to project a public bonhomie between the two parties on September 14.

Meanwhile, state BJP core group leaders huddled in Patna on September 13 to finalise the first list of potential candidates that will be presented to BJP's central election committee meet for announcement of their first list of candidates. The first phase of Bihar polls are slated for October 12 for which the notification is set to be issued on September 16.