Patna: The BJP, which was playing the role of "equal partner" in the new NDA, appears to have blinked by admitting that it was keen to contest the next Lok Sabha polls with Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United.
Speaking at an event in Calcutta on Friday night, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said the two parties were made for each other. "The JDU and the BJP are made for each other," Modi said.
"When the time comes, we will sit together and divide the seats. We will fight together and Narendra Modi will be again the Prime Minister in 2019."
"Alliance is a give and take. When both the partners feel they will benefit from it then only will it work. We will fight together," the senior BJP leader added.
Modi's comments assume significance as there were some discordant voices from leaders of both parties on seat sharing for the next general elections. After a meeting with MPs from Bihar, BJP president Amit Shah had asked partymen to strengthen it down to the booth level in all the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The JDU also appealed to its workers to brace for a contest on all the 40 seats.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad and other Opposition leaders had used the occasion to attack Nitish Kumar, claiming he was marginalised by the BJP to avenge the cancellation of a dinner in 2010.
Questions are being raised in Bihar's political circles on how the partners are going to work out the seat sharing in the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP and its allies LJP of Ram Vilas Paswan and Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP together hold 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP alone won 22 seats in 2014; the LJP got six and the RLSP bagged all the three it contested under the alliance.
Before the snapping of ties in 2013, the JDU used be the senior partner contesting 25 Lok Sabha seats and leaving the remaining 15 to the BJP.
A senior BJP leader conceded in private that the traditional "sitting-getting" formula would not work.
"The BJP is not only going to have to cut down on the seats it gave to the LJP and RLSP but also shed some of its own," this leader said.
The possibility of adjusting the BJP's other ally, Jitan Ram Manjhi's HAMS also looks remote.
The BJP would also have to pacify its own party cadre as inner JDU circles indicate that Nitish would like to contest at least 15 seats.
