Bihar battle: Alliances grapple with seat-sharing pangs as panel announces poll dates

While the Election Commission has announced the dates for the Bihar Assembly elections, the two alliances in the state — the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Mahagathbandhan — are struggling to finalise their seat-sharing formula.

“We have finished talks on candidates and sent the list to Delhi. The final call will be taken by the central leadership,” says Prem Rajan Patel, a member of BJP’s poll committee.

The major challenge for the NDA is to accommodate Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustan Awami Morcha. Manjhi has been demanding at least 20 seats, but offered less than 10. A frustrated Manjhi flew to Delhi on Sunday after his talks with Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP’s election in-charge for Bihar, failed.

“The Nitish Kumar-led JD-U and BJP are almost on the same page. Both will contest 100-odd seats each, with the JD-U getting a seat extra. The problem is with the smaller parties. The Chirag Paswan-led LJP had initially demanded 40 seats, but when asked to name his candidates, he came up with just 15. These are teething problems, which we should be able to overcome in a couple of days,” says a senior BJP leader, admitting that the BJP and JD-U are yet to finalise seats they will like to exchange.

In the Mahagathbandhan, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav is facing tantrums of Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) founder Mukesh Sahani. In the 2020 elections, Sahani had walked out of a press conference convened by the allies to announce their seat-sharing formula after he found out that his party had not been given seats despite an assurance by Tejashwi.

He walked across to the BJP and got 11 seats from the NDA. Of these, he won four. This time, he demanded 60 seats initially, but later agreed to bring down the number if he was promised the Deputy Chief Minister’s post. “However, the Congress is not ready to accept Sahani as the Deputy CM,” says an RJD leader.

Things are, however, getting smoother between the RJD and Congress. “From its initial demand of 75 seats, the Congress appears to have agreed to less than 60. In fact, 41 seats have already been cleared by alliance partners. But this is way lower than the 70 seats that the party contested in the 2020 polls, out of which it won only 19,” says a senior Congress leader.

He stresses that the party has agreed to contest tough seats such as those in Patna and Nalanda districts, where the BJP and JD-U are in a dominating position, jointly with partners. “We may end up with fewer seats in our quota, but may win more,” asserts the Congress leader.

The Left parties — CPI, CPM and CPI-ML, are also created hurdles for the alliance. The CPI and CPM have demanded 35 seats, but are likely to get slightly more than 10 that they contested in 2020. The CPI-ML, which won 15 seats in the 2020 polls, has demanded 50 this time, but may get around 25.

“Larger parties may see smaller parties’ demand as disproportionate, but they realise that these parties have pockets of influence. Everything counts in an election,” says Prof NK Choudhary, a former professor of economics at Patna University.