RJD chief Lalu Prasad at the news meet in Patna on Saturday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, March 1: RJD president Lalu Prasad today unilaterally offered the Congress 11 seats and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) one, saying the time for dialogue on the alliance front was over now.

“It is time for the real battle to begin,” he said. Insiders in both the RJD and the Congress described Lalu’s move as a very “critical stage” in the way of the Congress-RJD alliance.

“It is not the end of the road. Negotiations at the top level of both parties are still in progress. The Congress leadership must be realistic in its assessment of seats and also the scenario in which the secular parties are going to contest the polls,” said party spokesman Manoj Jha.

Sources said Lalu was miffed at the Congress leadership for “delaying” talks on seat negotiations, which eventually caused the flight of Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP to the NDA fold.

Unable to finalise the alliance despite his efforts, Lalu came to Patna last evening and announced: “It is time to hit the campaign trail rather than stay confined to New Delhi.”

The seats that Lalu has spared, according to sources, include Sasaram, Aurangabad, Jamui, Munger, Kishanganj, Purnea, Supaul, Patna Sahib, Nalanda, Hajipur, Muzaffarpur (all for Congress) and Katihar for the NCP.

The RJD chief has not spared the Madhubani seat to which Congress spokesperson Shakeel Ahmad, the leader who played a key role in initiating the process of the RJD-Congress alliance, is a strong claimant.

The RJD legislature party leader, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who had lost the Madhubani seat in 2009 by a slender margin, too, is a strong contender for the seat.

Apart from Madhubani, Lalu also has not spared Bhagalpur and East Champaran to which the Congress legislature party leaders, Sadanand Singh and Akhilesh Singh, are the claimants.

Sources, however, disclosed that Lalu was still open to making way for Shakeel Ahmad if the Congress responded to him.

“But the ball is now in the Congress’s court. The Congress would have to carry forward the talks,” said a source close to Lalu.

The RJD boss has called his party’s parliamentary board meeting tomorrow to take a final call on the seats. “He (Lalu) would wait for the Congress’s response on his offer. If the Congress responds positively, he would try to find a way out. But he would no longer go to New Delhi to get himself involved in the seat-sharing talks,” said a source.

When contacted, Bihar Congress chief Ashok Choudhary said: “The senior leaders from both the Congress and RJD are involved in the process of negotiations. We are still hopeful that something positive would come out.”