Though the Bihar Assembly elections are less than three months away, first sign of strain in the RJD-LJP alliance has come to the fore, with seat-sharing talks between the two parties having run into a wall. While the Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD has indicated that his party can not give more than 30 seats out of the total of 243 to the LJP, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan has conveyed that his party would like to contest on more than 60 seats.
Even though Mr Yadav and Mr Paswan had told reporters in Delhi in the first week of July that seat adjustment would be finalised within 10 days, the two parties appear to be far from putting the final stamp of approval in jointly contesting the state polls.
The seat-adjustment talks between the two parties still remain confined to the state chiefs of the two parties, namely Pashupati Kumar Paras of the LJP and Abdul Bari Siddiqui of the RJD.
“The seat adjustment talks between the two state chief have remained at a non-serious level, with the LJP in initial talks staking claim on 93 seats The talks are stalled as Mr Paswan is avoiding talking to Mr Yadav directly on seat adjustment and sends his brother, Mr Paras, in place for all talks. The LJP can not even contest on such a large number of seats and even this party will not be in a position to find candidates for such a large number of seats,” said a senior RJD leader.
The LJP, however, on its part has staked claim on number of seats that the RJD had given to the Congress and CPI in the 2005 Assembly elections, which together come to about 30 seats. Disregarding ambitious demand of the LJP for number of seats, the RJD leaders have started telling the party chief that giving anything above 30 would be a waste and amount to letting the BJP-JD (U) to walk away on such seats quite comfortably.