With the campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls peaking up, Congress “Big Brother” attitude in the crucial States — Bihar and Maharashtra— has hit a roadblock in the seat sharing dialogue between all the stakeholders of the Opposition alliance INDIA bloc. Congress is reluctant to "accept" the "diktat" of RJD offers of merely six/seven seats in the 40 Parliamentary constituencies of Bihar.
“This is perennial problem in Congress which is not ready to accept its diminishing size. Nitish Kumar (JDU leader and Bihar CM), Mamata Banerjee (TMC supremo and West Bengal CM) exited from the INDIA bloc all due to Congress big brother attitude. Had the alliance worked it would have been in a position to hold the juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We are yet to finalise the seats and others have started extensive campaigning. The only hopes of INDIA bloc of doing good were from Bihar and Maharashtra," a RJD Parliamentarian rued.
RJD and Congress are stuck over seat-sharing talks in Bihar, with several Congress leaders expressing unhappiness while RJD has expressed uneasiness for the grand old party decision to include former party MP Pappu Yadav in the party. Yadav merged his Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) with the Congress last week. He is husband of Congress Rajya Sabha MP Ranjeet Ranjan. In 2015, the RJD expelled him after he kept on targeting Lalu Prasad Yadav over the question of succession in the party.
RJD, which is also planning to bring in one of the daughter of its suprmeo Lalu in electoral politics, has already announced its candidates for four seats where polling is scheduled in the first phase on April 19.
Both Congress and RJD insiders said the Lalu-led party was not willing to give Congress more than five to six seats as against its demand of more than ten tickets. In 2019, while the RJD contested 19 constituencies, Congress candidates were in the fray from nine. The rest of the seats went to the RLSP of Upendra Kushwaha, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) of Mukesh Sahani, and the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) of Jitan Ram Manjhi. Both Kushwaha and Manjhi are now part of NDA.
Former Bihar Congress president Anil Sharma and former party MP Nikhil Kumar also taken on the RJD chief over the "unilateral seat-sharing decision" for first-phase seats and he also objected to incumbent BPCC chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh's decision to invite Lalu to the state Congress's office in Patna. Another decision of the RJD that is said to have rubbed the Congress the wrong way is to allocate Begusarai to the CPI. CPI general secretary D Raja who recently met Lalu and TejashwiYadav has announced Awadhesh Rai's candidature from the seat.
Similarly in Maharashtra too, the INDIA bloc which held a massive show of strength in Mumbai last week where all its alliance top leaders —Rahul Gandh, Sharad Pawar, Tejashwi Yadav, Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti—were present.
Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is still struggling to wrap up seat sharing allegedly because of a lack of coordination between the Congress and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Sharad Pawar led NCP. According to sources, the talks are stuck because the others in the alliance and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) of Prakash Ambedkar which is in talks with the MVA, have staked claim on seats the party wants. According to the VBA, the differences between the Congress and the other parties extend to at least 15 constituencies.
There is a restlessness within the Congress leadership as their share of seats has come down to 16-18 constituencies in the 48 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra and if done, its shall be the lowest ever for the grand old party. In 2019, the Congress's share was 26 constituencies and it contested 25, giving Palghar to the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi.
Thackeray has staked claim on a Congress bastion Sangli after Mumbai North West. From the Congress, former Maharashtra CM Vasantdada Patil's grandson and young party leader Vishal Patil is among the contenders for the ticket. Congress claim on Wardha in the Vidarbha region has also faced roadblocks from the Sharad Pawar's NCP which is adamant to contest Bhandara-Gondia, the home constituency of state Congress president Nana Patole.
The VBA has staked claim on seats such as Solapur, Akola, and Amaravati, which the Congress wants to contest. VBA wrote to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge complaining about the "lazy" attitude of the MVA, and claimed that the "lack of concurrence between the Congress and the Sena (UBT) in at least 10 seats and between the Congress, the NCP (SP), and SS (UBT) in at least five seats.
