BJP and its Bihar allies are expected to finalise their seat-sharing arrangement in a meeting on August 31 amid clamour for a larger share by partners such as Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).

Standing firm

The meeting has been called by BJP president Amit Shah, who has amply demonstrated his capacity to drive a hard bargain.

In his leadership, the party severed its decades-long ties with the Shiv Sena rather than agree to a lesser number of seats in the Maharashtra assembly elections last year. The ruling party is also not under any “alliance pressure” given that it has a majority of its own in Lok Sabha.

To the strident demands for more seats, especially by RLSP leader Upendra Kushwaha, a Bihar BJP leader told BusinessLine : “If he is such a big leader, why doesn’t he contest on his own. Why is he tagging along with the BJP? He can walk out, the door is wide open.”

This was in response to Upendra Kushwaha’s suggestion that the BJP should contest only 102 seats and leave the remaining 141 to its three allies – RLSP, LJP and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha.

According to Kushwaha, his own party should contest 67 seats while the LJP should get 74 seats.

Another factor in BJP’s position of relative strength is that the Janata alliance has already stitched up its seat-sharing arrangement, with both Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar’s respective parties agreeing to contest 100 seats each, leaving the remaining 40 for the Congress.

There is no room for either Kushwaha or Ramvilas Paswan to take recourse to threats of going back to the Janata alliance in case the BJP offers them lesser seats than they expect. Hence, the BJP does not perceive any hiccups in the final announcement of the NDA seat arrangement by first week of September.

To the allies’ rising demands, a BJP leader sarcastically said: “By their logic, we should let them have their pick. They can contest any number of seats they like and we can fight on the remaining seats. Does it make any sense?”

Clear target

Although none of the central BJP leaders have said anything about the number of seats the party will contest, a senior Bihar leader, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, had given an indication earlier this week. “The BJP will contest 170 seats. There is no question of anything less than that,” Choubey had said.

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