NDA in a bind as LJP sulks over two of 12 council seats

PATNA: The coming October-November assembly elections and CM Nitish Kumar’s efforts to fill the vacant 12 legislative council seats from the governor’s quota have brought into open the “fissures” in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state. Apart from JD(U) and BJP, LJP is the third NDA partner in the state.
LJP secretary general Shahnawaz Ahmad Kaifi had on Wednesday removed from the party its Munger district president Raghvendra Bharti for claiming in the media that the Bihar NDA was intact.“None of our functionaries other than LJP president Chirag Paswan can speak anything related to party’s policy matters,” Kaifi said on Thursday.
The JD(U) is not comfortable with the change in the posture that LJP president Chirag Paswan has adopted. “What can one say? His (Chirag’s) stance and demands are meaningless. It is nothing but pressure tactics and bargaining for more seats, which he has been doing,” a senior JD(U) functionary said.
On Wednesday, BJP general secretary and incharge of the party’s Bihar affairs Bhupender Yadav, along with state president of the party Dr Sanjay Kumar Jaiswal, called on Nitish at his official residence. On Sunday, Yadav had also held talks with Chirag in Delhi.
It is being assumed that Yadav and Nitish also discussed matters related to Chirag’s demand for two of the 12 legislative council seats and also regarding ‘honourable seat-sharing’ for the assembly elections.
Since the adoption of the ‘50:50 formula’ for the sharing of the 40 parliamentary seats in 2019 – BJP (17), JD(U) 17 and LJP (6) – Chirag has been demanding two council seats, insisting that the JD(U) and BJP should keep five each.
The sharing of the 243 assembly seats has apparently become a tough exercise, as Nitish would like to have more seats than the BJP to remain an elder partner in the combine, keeping the LJP at an arm’s length and its ambitions whittled down. Obviously, the application of the old ‘50:50 formula’ would not work.
In between, Chirag has been promoting himself to be a hard bargainer vis-a-vis Nitish. During his party outreach programme in February-March, he said Bihar needed more development, despite whatever had been achieved by CM Nitish Kumar. Both he and his father Ram Vilas Paswan said they would be with the BJP’s line on who it thinks should be the Bihar NDA’s CM face.
“We want to make it clear that none should take the LJP lightly. We have base and no one should underestimate our strength,” a senior LJP functionary said.