The official announcement of the alliance between the ruling party JD(U) and RJD along with the Congress was formally announced on Wednesday but, both the RJD chief lalu Prasad and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar skipped the event to share the common platform. Kumar had returned to Patna from his three-day trip to Mumbai and Delhi on Tuesday night while, lalu remained in Delhi.
It was widely expected for long that, both Kumar and lalu would jointly announce the formal alliance between the two parties and the Congress for the upcoming bypoll to 10 Assembly seats on August 21. Sources said that both the party leaders had telephonic talk regarding seat sharing on Tuesday.
After being trounced miserably in last lok Sabha poll, both the rivals, for nearly two decades, buried the hatchet and joined their hands together to take on the resurgent BJP in the upcoming by-election. The seat sharing arrangement was made between the parties with four seats each for the JD(U) and RJD while remaining two seats for the Congress.
Both Kumar and lalu missed the event and it was finally announced by the State unit heads of the parties. State RJD head Ram Chandra Purbey, JD(U) State chief Basistha Narayan Singh and BPCC president Ashok Chaudhury shared the platform to announce the seat-sharing for the upcoming bypolls on 10 seats next month.
At the Iftar party hosted by RJD president lalu Prasad recently at his residence in Patna, leaders from JD(U) and Congress parties too had participated and it was declared that an alliance has been sealed between the parties and it would formally be announced by the leaders of both the parties sometime around July 30.
“The alliance was the need of the hour and our party would announce the names of the candidates in a day or two”, said JD(U) State chief Basistha Narayan Singh. To a pointed question on why the JD(U) joined hands with RJD whom, they had fought for 15 years while calling it a “jungle raj”, the State JD(U) chief said “things which were relevant yesterday was not so today and those of today would not be the same tomorrow”.
While the State RJD chief Ramchandra Purbey said that “to defeat communal forces, the secular parties have come together and we also hope that this alliance will continue in future too”, said RJD State president Ram Chandra Purbey. He also took a dig at the acche din slogan of the BJP and said that “Instead of acche din price rise has come in the country”.
Both the party chiefs further said that “after recent lok Sabha poll in which the BJP came to power, while befooling voters, now the mood of the nation has started changing and we’re uniting to check split in anti-BJP votes in the bypoll”. All the State party chiefs also said that the names of their party candidates would be announce later.
When asked has the Congress party now realised that it could not fight the BJP alone and so the need emerged to make alliance with regional satraps, the State Congress chief Ashok Chaudhury said that “the situation demands the tie-up between the like-minded parties to check the spread of the BJP”.
Political pundits of the State believe that the upcoming by-elections would be a litmus test for the new alliance between the old rivals. “In the last lok Sabha poll recently, both the leaders lalu and Kumar were targeting each other like bite foes but, just after a couple of months, they have joined hands together. It throws surprises even to their supporters and voters”, said a political observer.
Both the parties believe that the vote-share they had received in the last lok Sabha poll would jointly outnumber what the BJP had got and it would be their revival in the State’s political firmament. The RJD and JD(U) together had got about 45 per cent of the vote whereas, the BJP alone had registered around 30 per cent vote share in the last Parliamentary poll.
“Both lalu and Kumar think that if they would come together, their voters too would join hands to vote for them and this is their biggest political illusion”, said a political observer of the State. Meanwhile, party sources have said that both the leaders would share stage during by-poll campaign in August. It would be interesting to see both the rivals sharing a common platform while appealing for votes to their party candidates in the by-poll which is being viewed as semi-final before the crucial state assembly elections next year, many believed.
