PATNA: Infighting in both the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Tejashwi Yadav-led Grand Alliance (GA) is increasing over seat-sharing and, more importantly, the face of CM in the Bihar election.
JD-U leader Prashant Kishor, who had demanded more seats than the BJP in 2020, triggered the first such fissure in the ruling camp. Kishor was castigated by none other deputy chief minister and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who attacked Kishor saying he was just in a “data collection” business.
Later, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement that the NDA will fight the election under Nitish Kumar settled the nerves of the two allies.
But soon, LJP, which is one of the ruling allies in Bihar as well as in the union government, caused some heartache over seat-sharing.
“LJP sits comfortably with a strong electoral invincibility in at least 43 seats in Bihar and deserves natural claims over those seats,” LJP’s Pashupati Kumar Paras told the media. The BJP had to come out stating that no individual can dictate either the formula of seat-sharing or number of seats.
In the Grand Alliance, HAM (Secular) founder Jitan Ram Manjhi is willing to contest on at least 80 seats on which he claims to be comfortable. The Congress is uneasy over the CM face.
Congress MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said that such issue is decided after the poll results are out. The RJD remains adamant on Tejashwi Yadav as its CM face.
Political analysts DM Diwakar and Dr RK Verma blame ambition in politics above ground reality for these infightings.
“The regional parties have nurtured more political ambitions than they deserve fairly. That’s why infighting is out and may get aggravated further,” Verma said.
THREE MAJOR PARTIES ARE NECK TO NECK
The fight over seat-sharing can be understood well if one looks at the party strength in the Bihar Assembly.
RJD has 80 MLAs, JD-U 71, BJP 53, LJP and RLSP each have two MLAs besides others.