The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Sunday announced its seat-sharing formula for next month’s Bihar Assembly elections, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United) (JDU) set to contest 101 seats each in the 243-member Assembly, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.
As part of the arrangement, Union Minister Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) (LJP-RV) will contest 29 seats, while the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) and the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) will contest six seats each.
Pradhan, who is the Bihar election in-charge and played a key role in securing the BJP’s third consecutive win in Haryana last year, said the NDA allies in Bihar welcomed the seat allocation. Talks were held in a cordial atmosphere, he added.
“The NDA allies have completed the distribution of seats in a cordial atmosphere. All workers and leaders of NDA parties warmly welcome this. Bihar is ready and an NDA government will be formed again,” Pradhan tweeted.
The announcement brings an end, for now, to the seat-sharing tussle between NDA constituents, particularly the HAM, led by Union Minister and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, and the RLM, which had threatened to contest independently in the two-phase Bihar Assembly elections.
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Sources said Manjhi had initially rejected the formula offered to HAM, which proposed fewer seats than the minimum 15 the party had sought. The agreement reached allows HAM to contest six seats, confirmed by Pradhan in his post on X. HAM is also likely to contest one MLC seat in the future.
Manjhi had earlier indicated that HAM would prefer to stay out of the polls if it was not allotted a "respectable number" of seats, clarifying that he was “requesting, not demanding.” Following the agreement, Manjhi left for Patna.
Meanwhile, the opposition INDIA bloc, which aims to end Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s rule, denied any rift among its constituents. RJD MLA Bhai Virendra said seat allocations for each party would be announced soon, with a press conference scheduled for Monday.
Amid the ongoing tussle between the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a photograph of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and Congress’s Akhilesh Prasad Singh chatting together on a flight went viral. Singh was on the flight from Patna to Delhi with Lalu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.
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