BJP national President Amit Shah along with party’s executive president Jagat Prakash Nadda convened a meeting with some of the senior leaders of State BJP Core Committee including, Chief Minister Raghubar Das, Union Minister Arjun Munda, State BJP president Laxman Gilua to discuss names of aspiring candidates for upcoming Assembly polls and decide the format of its alliance with AJSU party and Lok jan Shakti Party in Delhi on Thursday.
State election in-charge OP Mathur, party senior leader Ram Vichar Netam alongwith others also attended the meeting, where the leaders reviewed the names of probable candidates and number of seats to be given to alliance partners, sources said.
Although, the meeting continued till the time of filing of this report, party insiders said that the top leaders of the party were mainly discussing on seat sharing formula with alliance partners AJSU Party and the LJP and the names for the first and second phase of polls to be held on November 30 and December 07.A senior BJP leader requesting anonymity said that after the review of names by the two top leaders of the party the list will be presented before the Central Election Committee, which is scheduled to meet on Friday to give a final stamp on the names of candidates.
After rounds of discussions at the State level a bunch of names has been taken to the Central leadership for its final approval. Sources said that three to five names have been shortlisted for each Assembly segment and a number of sitting MLAs may be replaced by other “promising” candidates.
Before leaving for Delhi on Thursday State Election incharge OP Mathur said that there was no tussle about seat sharing in the NDA fold and the alliance partners are intact.
However, the AJSU party, which fought on eight seats in 2014 Assembly polls, is expecting more seats this time. Sources, however, said that for the first and second phase of polls there are no significant differences between the BJP and AJSU Party and therefore there should not be any difficulty for the NDA partners to select candidates for the initial phases of polls.Party functionaries said that this time the BJP is focusing mainly on Santhal Pargana, which has remained a JMM bastion and it will put in all out efforts to clinch as much seats as it can this time to achieve its target of 65 plus seats in the polls.