After BJP president Amit Shah this week received detailed briefing from BJP’s Bihar unit about the party’s preparedness for the 2019 general elections and possible seats to be contested, the Janata Dal (United) has begun posturing for the ‘bigger share’ of 40 lok Sabha seats from the State.
Amid reports of a rift between the BJP and the JD(U) over seat sharing, senior BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi said here on Monday voters in Bihar will exercise their franchise on the basis of “PM Modi’s name and Nitish Kumar’s work”.
Sushil Modi’s comment came a day after the JD(U) said Nitish Kumar is the face of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Bihar.
“The RJD-Congress alliance has weakened a lot now. Nobody can match the BJP-JD(U) alliance when it comes to running a State,” Sushil Modi said and claimed that there was “no dispute” between the two parties. On Friday, Shah had a meeting with Bihar BJP unit chief Nityanand Rai and other State leaders as also with Bihar State-in-charge Bhupendra Yadav to identify the seats keeping in mind demands of all NDA allies, including JD(U), lok Janshakiti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan, and Rashtriya lok Samta Party of Upendra Kushwaha.
In alliance with the lJP and the RlSP, the BJP had contested 30 seats in Bihar in 2014 and won 22 of them.
The JD(U) had contested the poll alone. Now that the BJP will have share the seats with JD(U) , too, they may be forced to deny tickets to some of their MPs to meet Nitish Kumar’s demand.
Shah is learnt to have told the Bihar BJP leaders that they should focus on the development agenda which would also be the main focus of the NDA’s 2019 poll campaign. The Bihar NDA is expected to discuss the “seat” issue in their meeting on June 7.
A clear indication that the bargaining for the lok Sabha seats in Bihar has heated up came from JD(U) leader KC Tyagi’s comment that Nitish Kumar is the biggest leader of the Bihar alliance.
The JD(U) which has only two lok Sabha members is looking for a better seat-sharing arrangement commensurate with its strength in the Bihar Assembly.
“Being a veteran, Nitish Kumar is the biggest leader of the Bihar alliance. He has won many elections. That is why the NDA in Bihar is working under his guidance and will continue to do so. Currently, there have not been any talks regarding seat-sharing. Nitish Kumar will lead the alliance in the 2019 general elections,” Tyagi said.
JD(U) spokesperson Ajay Alok also confirmed Nitish Kumar as the face of NDA in Bihar on Sunday.
“There is no confusion in JD(U) regarding seat sharing. We used to contest on 25 seats and BJP on 15 seats. Now more allies have joined us so all top leaders will decide about the seat sharing,” he said.
While the JD(U) had gone it all alone in the 2014 lok Sabha poll and won just two sets, it registered an impressive presence in the Assembly elections held a year later as a partner of the RJD and the Congress in the Grand Alliance.
The issue is whether the poor showing of JD(U) in the last lok Sabha elections in 2014 when it was out of the NDA or whether its much-improved showing in the 2015 Assembly elections would be taken as the yardstick for deciding the number of seats to be given to the Nitish Kumar-led party in the coming lok Sabha polls.
In 2009 lok Sabha polls, when the BJP-JD (U) fought together, the JD(U) had won 22 out of 25 seats it had contested while the BJP won 12 out of 15.