Tough times: Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan

Patna, Aug. 5: The Bihar Assembly election is a few months away, but the scramble for seats has started. The power desire has scripted divide among allies, too.

Infighting has erupted among the two major alliances — JD(U) and BJP as well as RJD-Lok Janashakti Party — over the seats to fall in their share in the run-up to the Assembly polls in Bihar.

Unable to sort out the deal over the seats, the state leaders of both RJD and LJP first squabbled among themselves and then rushed to New Delhi today to settle the issue in presence of their respective bosses, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan.

On the other hand, the BJP too time and again is going to the press staking its claim over 103 out of total 243 without getting any response from the JD(U). The state BJP chief, C.P. Thakur, made it clear that the party would not settle on anything less than 103 seats.

The party is wary that Nitish Kumar, who took away the Kishenganj Lok Sabha seat from the BJP in 2009, can reduce the party’s share in the Assembly seats too. The JD(U) so far has maintained a stoic silence on the issue.

In course of their meeting last month, both Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas “assigned” their respective state party presidents, Abdul Bari Sidiqui and Pashupati Nath Paras, to sort out the deal on seat-sharing.

Sources close to Sidiqui and Paras revealed that the two leaders “squabbled” more than talking in an amicable political fashion.

The LJP has 12 MLAs against RJD’s 56. Sources in the LJP, however, said the Ram Vilas’s party was insisting on at least 90 seats in its share, leaving only 153 for the RJD.

The LJP has some practical problems. The Harsidhi seat of the LJP legislature party leader, Maheshwar Singh, has become a reserved seat. Similarly, the Warisnagar seat, earlier reserved for SC, is in general category now. The LJP MLA, Achyutanand’s Jandaha seat has gone reserved for SC.

Thus, apart from claiming at least 90 seats, the LJP wants to ensure ”safe seats” for its sitting MLAs whose seats lost their old demographic profile.

It is believed that the embattled RJD boss is under the “compulsion” to keep the alliance with the LJP to have the combination of the militant Yadavs and Paswans intact in the polls. Moreover, it will be hard for Lalu Prasad to go it alone whose party cannot bank on other than Yadavs, who constitute about 15 per cent of the voters, and a section of Muslims.

The BJP is going to the town with its claim on 103 seats even ahead of the start of the dialogue process between the two partners. It has more to do with infighting within than its differences with the JD(U), said sources.

The upper caste BJP leaders led by former state party chief Gopal Narayan Singh are at war with the deputy chief minister, Sushil Kumar Modi. They openly allege that Modi has bartered the party’s interest to Nitish Kumar for power. This section is apprehensive that Nitish might eventually convince Modi to settle for less number of seats.