New Delhi, Feb. 24: The Congress leadership has begun the groundwork for forming United Progressive Alliance governments in Bihar and Jharkhand with a count of smaller parties and groups that could have a presence in the new Assemblies in the two states.

?The phase of polling is over. With it also over are the friendly contests among UPA partners that turned bitter during campaigning. Now is the time for making all efforts to ensure UPA governments in both states,? a leader said.

The leadership is understood to have asked those who ran the campaign to stay put in the two capitals till the results are out on Sunday.

Party chief Sonia Gandhi will take the lead in persuading Ram Vilas Paswan to help install a UPA government in Bihar of which Laloo Prasad Yadav?s Rashtriya Janata Dal would be a part. Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay said the Congress is in touch with smaller parties and Independents in Jharkhand.