Patna, June 9: The option of aligning with Lalu Prasad closed, former Jitan Ram Manjhi and his followers are drifting towards the BJP.

"We would take a final decision on the matter within a few days," said a confidant of Manjhi and former minister who is busy negotiating with the BJP.

The Manjhi camp is reported to have demanded 50 seats from the BJP. "But it would all depend on the winnibility factor, constituency to constituency. If the BJP's candidate is stronger, they should take the seat. If our candidate is stronger, then we should be given the seat," said the former minister, stressing that talks are underway.

When the alliance between Nitish and Lalu had hit a rough patch, there were sections in both the RJD and Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), which strongly advocated a tie-up between the two parties, stressing that Lalu's votebank plus that of the Mahadalits would be an unbeatable combination. But we realised that Lalu is using the name of Manjhi only to increase his own bargaining power with Nitish and the Congress," said a Manjhi party leader.

Former chief minister Manjhi has been campaigning throughout the state targeting Nitish Kumar. "He draws big crowds even in the height of summer. On Monday, the crowd in Jamui was over 10,000," said a senior BJP leader, conceding that his party was eager to have Manjhi on board. He would be an additional crowdpuller for the NDA during campaigning. Manjhi had initially played "hard-to-get" for the BJP as he announced that he would go to the polls alone.

"But the party neither has resources nor the support base to fight the polls alone. We have realised that we would be more effective if we fight with the BJP and concentrate on seats which we can win. What's the use of contesting 100 seats when you cannot win even half of those," said the senior HAM leader.

The BJP has already publicly declared that it was open to an alliance with Jitan Ram Manjhi and not Pappu Yadav. The trouble with HAM is that there are a few associates who the BJP would like to avoid giving tickets to.

"It is going to be hard bargaining for seats," said another HAM leader.

He pointed out that there might be some HAM leaders like Gyanu Singh Gyanu and Rajiv Ranjan who would join the BJP irrespective of the HAM-BJP tie-up or not.