Manages to convince BJP to give him an equal number of seats to contest LS polls.
Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal United (JDU) president Nitish Kumar has emerged as the “big brother” of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) family in Bihar after he was successfully able to convince the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to give him an equal number of seats to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
A top JDU leader told this newspaper on Saturday: “As of now, it is 16-16-6-2 (JDU, BJP, LJP, RLSP). If the RLSP leaves the alliance, it will become 17-17-6. We do not want to comment on the RLSP’s strength and weaknesses, but it is a known fact that the number of seats that they are being offered (2) is more than enough.” Bihar has 40 Lok Sabha seats.
Though the exact number of seats that the present four NDA partners (BJP, JDU, LJP and RLSP) will be contesting was not declared at a joint press conference that was done by Nitish Kumar and BJP chief Amit Shah, while stating that they would be contesting on an equal number of seats, Patna-based party leaders have said that the equation is likely to be 16-16 or 17-17 for BJP-JDU, while leaving the rest for LJP and RLSP. In the 2014 general elections, the JDU, while contesting on 38 of the 40 LS seats of Bihar, had won on two seats and it is in this context that political observers are saying that Nitish Kumar has managed to emerge as the “bigger brother” in Bihar.
“One must remember that in 2014, Nitish Kumar’s candidates came on third position on 29 of the 38 seats they contested while polling 16% of the votes. The loss in this equation (16-16-6-2) is clearly of the BJP which in 2014 had contested on 30, won on 22 and came second on 6 of the seats,” a Patna-based political observer said. The BJP will be sacrificing at least five of its sitting MPs if it contests on 17 seats.
Patna-based sources said that RLSP leader Upendra Kushwaha has no option but to stick to the NDA because he has not got the kind of response that he was expecting from Tejashwi Yadav who is the de-facto leader of the Grand Alliance in the state.
“Tejashwi Yadav will not give Kushwaha even his own seat of Karakat, leave alone any other seat that Kushwaha is demanding. If he (Kushwaha) is so sure of getting five seats from the Grand Alliance, why is he not moving to them? He is just trying his luck and trying to put pressure on Amit Shah for extra seats which frankly he cannot win,” a senior JDU source said. RLSP national spokesperson Madhaw Anand said that clarity on the issue will come by Monday. “Our president and the BJP president are meeting on Monday and who will contest on how many seats will be announced by then. You can write it on record that we will not accept less than three seats, come what may,” Anand told The Sunday Guardian.
Just after the joint press conference of Nitish Kumar and Amit Shah on Friday, Kushwaha released pictures of his meeting with Tejashwi. Commenting on that, Anand said that it was a “chance meeting” and not a political one. The RLSP contested on four seats in 2014, winning on three and garnering 3% of the valid votes. However, one of them, Arun Kumar who won from Jahanabad, has turned rebel.
Arun Kumar told The Sunday Guardian that he would decide his future course of action after Sunday when his rally in Patna was over. “There is no question of going with Nitish Kumar. Under his tenure, the state has seen the Muzaffarpur shelter home scam in which his minister is involved. The SRIJAN scam also took place and he is doing his best to save those who are involved in the scam. Farmers and labourers are leaving the state because of lack of development. How can he be called a Sushasan Babu?” Arun Kumar said, effectively ruling out joining the NDA.