After long and hard bargaining and some last minute hiccups, the BJP on Monday struck a seat-sharing deal for the high-stake Bihar Assembly polls keeping the lion’s share of 160 of the total 243 seats to itself and dividing the rest to three allies.
Former Chief Minister and Mahadalit leader Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM(S) managed to pocket 20 seats while Ram Vilas Paswan’s lok Janshakti Party (lJP) and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya lok Samta Party (RlSP) received 40 and 23 seats respectively.
The State would go to the polls from October 12 in five phases and results will be announced on November 8. The BJP-led NDA will be putting up more Muslim and Yadav candidates this time in Bihar in a bid to crack the strong hold of the rival alliance among these communities.
Flanked by key alliance leaders like Paswan and Kushwaha besides Manjhi, BJP chief Amit Shah said an “united” National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was on its way to securing two-thirds majority in the State against the “crumbling” alliance of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, RJD chief lalu Prasad and Congress.
Shah maintained that the phase of seat negotiations was behind them and all differences were sorted out. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an accepted leader of all four NDA parties.
The BJP Chief said the alliance would not allow Bihar to face 'Jungle-Raj Part two' under the so called grand alliance of desperate leaders. In a hitting attack on the coalition of JDU-RJD and Congress, the BJP chief said divisions have already started appearing in it with the leader of Janata Parivar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, walking out of the alliance.
The BJP President said some leader of Manjhi's Hindusaani Awam Morch will also contest on BJP's symbols. Manjhi's insistence to have more than 15 seats had delayed the seat sharing pact of the NDA as he insisted he had a better electoral base among 'Mahadilits' than Paswan.
On asked whether his demands caused delay in seat sharing announcement , the former Chief Minister (under JDU leadership) claimed there was never a fight over the number of seats and his only intention was that NDA should put up as many "winnable" candidates as possible.
The BJP president dispelled doubts over the unity of NDA saying all is well within the alliance and they would emerge victorious defeating political forces who had kept the sate backward and poor.
"There is no tug of war. There is no tension. You can see their smiling faces," Shah said, pointing to alliance leaders on the stage. Former Deputy Chief Minister and a potential candidate for CM's post, Sushil Kumar Modi, was also present.
The BJP Chief said Bihar chief minister was promising to provide a crime-free rule in alliance with lalu Prasad whose tenure in 1990s was dubbed by Kumar as 'jungle raaj'.
"On the one side is a coalition of compulsion and forced arithmetic with little common purpose, while on the other side is an alliance with a common chemistry and similar ideologies of development. Time has come for people of Bihar to vote for development," Shah said.
The BJP chief said the issue of Chief Ministership will be decided by the NDA MlAs after the polls and asserted that there are no differences among the constituents.
Meanwhile, Sushil Modi dismissed claim of the grand JD(U)-RJD-Congress of having solid support of the Yadavs -- the most numerous caste which had traditionally backed lalu Prasad -- saying Prasad's hold over them had "weakened" as reflected in the loss of his wife Rabri Devi and daughter Misa Bharti in the lok Sabha polls.
Speaking to newspersons after the press conference, the former deputy chief minister claimed that Muslims were not "allergic" to the NDA, and said his party would put up more Muslim candidates this time. "We (BJP) and our allies will certainly field more Muslims," he t said claiming that Muslims have good equation with Bihar BJP and they would not necessarily be working to defeat the BJP. eom