RJD, JD-U tie up to fight Bihar polls

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, June 8, 2015: DHNS:  The Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Sunday decided to contest the Bihar Assembly elections in alliance.

The decisions were taken in a meeting held at the residence of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. Bihar Chief Minister and JD-U leader Nitish Kumar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and JD-U chief Sharad Yadav attended the meeting.

“Today (On Sunday), it has been decided that the RJD and the JD-U will contest the Bihar elections in alliance. A six-member committee has been constituted—with three members each from both the parties—to decide on seat-sharing and other poll-related issues,” announced SP general secretary Ramgopal Yadav after a two-hour meeting of Janata Parivar leaders that took place after a month-long fight. The SP leader, however, did not reveal the names of the members of the committee.

He also did not disclose whether the meeting took any decision on the issue of declaring Nitish Kumar as the alliance’s chief ministerial candidate. Party general secretaries Javed Raza and Arun Kumar Shrivastav told Deccan Herald everything has been sorted out and the committee will decide on the specific seats.

Sources claimed a broader agreement had been reached over the number of seats, and according to it, the JD-U and the RJD will contest in 100 seats each, and remaining 43 would be distributed among other allies, including the Congress, the NCP and the Left. They said the Congress would get 20 seats, the NCP five and the Left Front 17.

However, uneasiness in the alliance could clearly be seen as Neither Lalu nor Nitish made an appearance before the media after the meeting. Also, though Lalu refused to comment on Nitish’s meeting with Rahul Gandhi, he could not hide his annoyance over the development.