Aatmja Kumari(Intern Journalist): The Congress party has called its Bihar unit chief Madan Mohan Jha and CLP leader Sadanand Singh to Delhi on Wednesday amid discussion of seat-sharing with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). The AICC Screening Committee of Bihar will also meet today at 3 pm. The RJD-Congress-Left alliance is meeting the final round of seat-sharing for the Bihar assembly elections and an announcement is likely to be made later this week.
Ahead of the announcement, RJD and Congress are pressurizing each other to win more seats. Sources said that talks are going on between RJD and Congress for about 10 seats. He said there is a possibility of contesting about 150 seats in the 243-member RJD assembly. A source told that the Congress would get around 70 seats and the Left parties would get around 20 seats. The nomination for the first phase of voting in Bihar will start from October 1.
Sources said that during the beginning of the talks, it was decided that the seat-sharing would be based on the 2015 formula, according to which 41 seats were to be won by the Congress and 101 seats for the RJD. Of the remaining 101 seats, which were contested by JD-U in 2015, 50 were to be contested by RJD, 30 Congress, and 20 Left parties.
Sources said that the Congress was cautious in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when 12 seats were decided for the party in the alliance, but later it got only nine seats. The Bihar assembly elections will be held in three phases – 28 October, 3 November, and 7 November and the counting of votes will take place on 10 November. In the 2015 assembly elections, JD-U, RJD, and Congress contested together under the banner of the Grand Alliance. On the other hand, the BJP-led NDA contested along with the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and other allies.
The RJD with 80 seats emerged as the single largest party in the elections, followed by JD-U (71) and BJP (53). However, BJP got the largest vote share (24.42 percent), followed by RJD with 18.35 percent and JD-U (16.83 percent). Differences between RJD and JD-U emerged and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar returned to NDA.
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