JD(U) flexes muscles, to ask NDA for 40 Lok Sabha seats

Mukesh Ranjan

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 24

Making the first move ahead of the 2019 General Election, the JD(U), one of the ruling NDA partners in Bihar, has staked claim over a larger share of 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in the alliance. It has suggested that the basis of seat-sharing should be the “results of 2015 Assembly polls”.

A Delhi-based senior JD(U) leader claimed that the 2015 Assembly poll results are the latest show of electoral strength of the respective alliance partners in the NDA and this can’t be ignored while settling sharing of seats ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Noting that the seat-sharing formula in the NDA is yet to be arrived at, the JD(U) leader said, the senior partner BJP should take the lead to begin the process as early as possible so that it could be settled well in advance to avoid possibility of “any serious differences over the issue” near the polls.

In the last Assembly elections, the JD(U) won 71 of the 243 seats, while the BJP emerged victorious in 53 seats and the LJP and RLSP in two each. But then the JD(U) was an ally of the RJD and Congress, before it dumped them last year to rejoin the NDA.

Countering the proposition, BJP and LJP leaders from Bihar termed it “unrealistic”, but said, there was nothing “unusual”, as political parties deploy this kind of tactics in alliances ahead of elections.

A senior Bihar BJP leader said, “The results of 2015 Assembly elections were the outcome of a different political spectrum in the state. Then Nitishji’s party was in alliance with Laluji’s RJD and so it does not reflect the true strength of JD(U). The real strength of JD(U) was that of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in which the party contested alone and had only two seats and lost deposits in several constituencies.”

In the 2014 polls, the BJP had won 22 seats with the LJP and the RLSP winning six and three seats, respectively.