Patna: The simmering tension within the NDA is cutting through the surface with the Janata Dal United on Tuesday saying a decision has to be taken on whether seat-sharing for 2019 would be on the basis of the 2014 general elections or the 2015 Assembly polls.
"It has to be decided if seat-sharing will take place on the basis of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls or the 2015 Assembly elections," JDU secretary-general K.C. Tyagi said on Tuesday.
He, however, did not specify a time frame for sorting out the issue, instead indicating that the matter would be discussed between the alliance partners after the formal notification for the Lok Sabha elections, due in the summer of 2019, is issued.
Tyagi's statement comes at a time when questions are being raised about the unity of the NDA in Bihar. Senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh on Tuesday said that RLSP chief and Union minister Upendra Kushwaha would be joining the Grand Alliance sooner or later. Earlier, the Congress had made a "conditional" offer to chief minister Nitish Kumar to part ways with the BJP and rejoin the Grand Alliance.
State BJP leader Rajendra Singh had on Monday caused a flutter in the alliance when he declared that his party will contest all the 22 Lok Sabha seats it won in 2014 and was ready to field candidates in all 40, if needed.
"The BJP will field its candidates in all the seats which it had won in 2014. The party will also protect the interests of its allies and arrive at a seat-sharing arrangement which enables the NDA to win all the 40 seats in Bihar," Singh had said in Sasaram, the district headquarters of Rohtas.
However, alliance leaders privately admit that working out a seat-sharing formula will be difficult. If the BJP insists on the 2014 formula, under which it gets all the winning seats, it will take 22, followed by the LJP (6) and RLSP (3). In that case, only nine seats will be left for Nitish Kumar's JDU, that too the difficult ones. "It is a totally unacceptable formula," said a senior JDU leader.
The BJP, on the other hand, is unlikely to accept the 2015 Assembly polls as the basis of seat sharing because the BJP won only 53 against 71 bagged by the JDU which had fought the elections in alliance with the RJD and Congress. "After all, the Lok Sabha elections will be centred around the issue of re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the second time," said a senior BJP leader, stressing that the party would not mind conceding more ground in the Assembly polls as that will be fought with Nitish Kumar as the face of the NDA.
Senior leaders of both the BJP and JDU point out that traditional formulas of seat-sharing are unlikely to work when the final deal is discussed. "It will require understanding and sacrifices by all four partners of the NDA to remove the tangle," said a JDU minister.
