New Delhi, Sept. 14: The BJP and its allies have finally hammered out a deal for the Assembly elections, with the national party expectedly cornering the bulk of the seats and Jitan Ram Manjhi, the newest constituent in the combine who drove a hard bargain, getting the least.
Of the 243 seats up for grabs, the BJP kept 160 for itself and gave away 40 to Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party, 23 to Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Samata Party and 20 to former chief minister Manjhi's Hindustan Awam Morcha Secular (HAMS).
But at the end of the day, it was Manjhi, who until yesterday was said to be unhappy over the "paltry" number of seats, who was smiling. The BJP, sources said, has allowed Manjhi to choose five additional candidates from its own quota with the option that they could fight either on the BJP symbol or on that of HAMS. (See Page 6)
BJP Bihar leader Sushil Modi told reporters that the central election committee would meet on Tuesday evening to shortlist the candidates for the first two legs of the five-phase polls starting on October 12 and ending on November 5.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his senior colleagues, among them Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari, will be present at the meeting that will be chaired by BJP president Amit Shah. Rajnath, the home minister, has called off a visit to Jammu and Kashmir to be around for the sitting that is expected to go on until late night.
Today, leaders of the coalition smiled as they held hands on the dais at the media conference hall in the BJP headquarters, Shah occupying the centre stage. But beneath the show of camaraderie were half-hearted notes of disgruntlement that came - for a change - not from Manjhi but the Paswans, Ram Vilas and his MP-son Chirag.
The Paswans let on to the media through their party officials that the BJP had "promised" them 42 seats instead of 40. However, neither came on record to express their dissatisfaction nor were they available on phone. Aides said they were "busy" in candidate selection.
The drama that was played out for the past week after Manjhi made it plain to the BJP that he should not be given a "lesser" bargain than Paswan because he was a "bigger" Dalit leader culminated in a meeting between the HAMS leader and Shah this morning at the BJP president's house.
Manjhi's other carp was that Shah need not have made a show of his "friendship" with Paswan and posed for pictures that showed the LJP chief shovelling sweetened yoghurt into Shah's mouth after their tête-à-tête on Saturday.
So, today Shah made it a point to have the TV channels over at his residence soon after his session with Manjhi concluded so that there was live footage of him offering the Mahadalit leader sweets.
Manjhi, hit by serial disasters since Sunday, met with another soon after he got into his car outside Shah's house. The vehicle hit that of a passer-by. While nobody was hurt, Manjhi's car had badly dented the other one.
On Sunday, Manjhi's son was briefly detained in Bihar after he was allegedly caught carrying cash of over Rs 4.6 lakh, well above the model code permissible limit of Rs 50,000.
Addressing the media this morning, Shah urged Bihar's voters to vote in an NDA government after "having given the Congress opportunities, tolerating Lalu Prasad and witnessing Nitish Kumar's administration". "We promise the people we will leave no stone unturned in taking Bihar to new heights of development," he said.
Stressing that Bihar's development was the NDA's top priority, Shah said the NDA would shortly unveil its election manifesto.
Later, speaking to journalists, Sushil Modi said Nitish had "betrayed" Bihar by throwing away a two-third majority mandate (with the BJP in the last election) and reducing his government to a minority.
Modi said the BJP today was a party of "Mandal" (the other backward classes and the Dalits) and "Kamandal" (the other castes). "A lot of water has flowed through the Ganga since the era of Mandal-Kamandal. Manjhi, Kushwaha and Paswan are the products of Mandal-era politics, they are all firmly with us today. The Congress is a non-entity (in Bihar). It got 40 seats only because Nitish wants to field more of his candidates on the Congress's symbol. Lalu Prasad is not being allowed to share a platform with Rahul Gandhi," he said.
He dubbed the Lalu-Nitish-Congress combine a "tried, tested and failed coalition".
