With the Election Commission of India on Sunday announcing the tentative schedule for the “mother of all electoral” battles in Bihar in September-October, political parties in the State are expected to swing into action to start talks on seat sharing and alliance formation.
In an interview to PTI, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi said the Assembly elections were likely to be held sometime in September-October. A reworked expenditure monitoring system and a large number of central forces will be deployed to curb money and muscle power in the polls.
“Abuse of money is a big problem in Bihar. Therefore, this time we are going in for more systematic efforts. Certain legal amendments are yet to come from the law Ministry. But within our powers, we have launched expenditure monitoring,” the CEC said.
“This time we will identify people who serve as a channels for distributing bribes, liquor and gifts. This assessment is still going on and we hope to come up with a re-strategised expenditure monitoring system that we will roll out at an appropriate time,” he said.
A key feature of the crucial Assembly elections will be a clash between the two former allies BJP and the JD(U) and an alliance between two former foes, the RJD and the JD(U). Two newly-floated parties will also be making their debut in this election.
For the 243 Assembly seats the direct contest is poised to be between the NDA comprising BJP, lok Janshakti Party (lJP) and Rashtriya lok Samata Party (RlSP) and the alliance of ruling JD(U) and RJD with Congress as a likely poll partner. It will be the first time in 18 years that JD(U) led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will be face-to-face with former ally BJP in the Assembly election. The two parties in alliance won two consecutive Assembly polls in 2005 and 2010 to form the Government.
They broke up in July 2013 and in the aftermath of the drubbing in May 2014 general election the two traditional foes Nitish and RJD boss lalu Prasad joined hands.
Since the much-touted merger of Janata Parivar on the national level and of JD(U) and RJD in Bihar seems temporarily ruled out, the two Bihar parties are sweating it out to formalise an electoral alliance though there are many ifs and buts in this arrangement and its leaders are looking for some acceptable formula, which is so far eluding them.
"Talks are going on for the alliance and there will be no problem in reaching a formula of seat sharing," said Bihar JD(U) president Bashistha Narain Singh, who is busy chalking out a seat sharing formula for the election to 24 legislative Councils seats .
The BJP, like the last lok Sabha election, will go to Assembly polls in alliance with lJP of Paswan and RlSP of Upendra Kushwaha, both Union Ministers. The BJP has set a Mission 180 for Bihar and party president Amit Shah recently called a meeting of the top leaders of the party from Bihar and gave them a task to be fulfilled in the next 90 days. All its MPs and legislators have been asked to reach out to all the villages under their jurisdiction.
"We are sitting prepared to face election," said leader of Opposition Nand Kishore Yadav. Asked about their alliance, he said there would be no issue in sorting out the seat sharing with two other allies. "We have no such problem and will soon accelerate process of adjustment," Yadav added.