Patna, Oct. 26: Nine years after it separated from Bihar, Jharkhand politics continues to be in the shadow of its mother state with Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar playing key roles in finalising seats and alliances in the run-up to the Jharkhand elections scheduled to start from November 27.

While Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan are leaving no stone unturned to woo the Jharkhand Congress, cracks have developed within the NDA ranks with BJP boss Rajnath Singh not willing to accommodate JD(U) in Jharkhand.

However, Lalu and Nitish are not entertaining ticket claims, pleading that the alliance issue has not yet been settled, yet. “We do not want to repeat mistakes made during the Bihar Lok Sabha elections in Jharkhand. LJP-RJD and Congress contested separately in Bihar, a situation that the BJP-led NDA took advantage of,” said LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, talking to The Telegraph.

However, a Congress source revealed that his party was reluctant to enter into an alliance with the RJD-LJP combination in Jharkhand. Instead, party general secretary Rahul Gandhi was in favour of strengthening the party in the region. Members indicated that the Congress might think of joining hands with Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Party, if the latter agreed to “spare more seats”.

Despite running the government, the JD(U)-BJP combination do not appear to share positive vibes in Jharkhand. The BJP had spared 15 seats to the state JD(U) in 2004 Assembly polls. This time, the saffron party plans to contest from all 81 seats in Jharkhand fuelling negative reactions in the JD(U).

“The BJP should have taken advantage of Nitish’s image and spared more seats. But, the party was arrogant enough to declare its intention to go alone in Jharkhand,” said senior JD(U) leader.

What appears to have changed the dynamics between the BJP and the JD(U) in Jharkhand is the “change of guard” and squabbles in the top rung. The JD(U) and the BJP had it easy when party general secretary Arun Jaitley was the Jharkhand in-charge, as Nitish was said to have had a better understanding with Jaitley, who had Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi in his camp. Sources state that Nitish does not share the same camaraderie with Rajnath Singh.

The LJP-RJD combination and the NDA will try to fight it out in Jharkhand before the 2010 Bihar election. Buoyed by the good show in the recently concluded Bihar bypolls and BJP’s debacle in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunanchal Pradesh, Lalu Prasad said: “The BJP will bite dust in Jharkhand polls, too.”

“People will not forget the way the RJD boss messed up the state by installing an Independent, Madhu Koda, as its chief minister,” reminded Modi, as a retort.