The BJP and its Bihar allies will meet on August 31 to work out sharing of the 243 Assembly seats in Bihar as parties like the lJP and the RlSP are vying to have a good deal in the ticket distribution.
The BJP and allies are expected to finalise the ticket list before the second week of September, according to sources. Several “informal rounds” of talks have already deliberated to work out an acceptable seat sharing formula.
BJP president Amit Shah will head the meeting next Monday. The party’s Bihar in-charge Bhupendra Yadav said the BJP and allies would work out mutually satisfying seat sharing formula and there was no problem on that count.
lok Janshanki Party (lJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya lok Samta Party (RlSP) president Upendra Kushwaha — both Union Ministers — and Hinsustani Awam Morcha (Secular) chief Jitan Ram Manjhi are likely to attend the meeting, the first such formal gathering of all the NDA allies over seat-sharing.
Paswan and Kushwaha had earlier met Shah but sources in the two parties said they have not been offered any concrete proposal so far. The BJP has, however, dismissed any communication gap between it and the allies in the NDA.
Kushwaha is understood to have asked the BJP to contest 102 seats, it had contested in 2010 and leave 142 others to its allies. JD(U), BJP’s partner in the last election before they split in 2013, had then fought 142 seats. The BJP, however, seeks to contest around 185 seats.
Supporters of Kushwaha have been, time and again, drumming up his candidature for Chief Minister’s post in the poll-bound State while Pawan has himself ruled out harbouring any such ambitions in the run up to the Bihar polls.
The polls may be conducted between in and around October 24 to November 12 before Deepawali and ‘Chhath festival’.