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Bihar election: INDIA bloc vs INDIA bloc on 11 seats as opposition's seat-sharing talks stalled
The Rashtriya Janata Dal earlier this week named 143 candidates for the elections to the 243-seats Bihar assembly.
Even as the last date to file nominations for the second phase of assembly elections in Bihar has passed, the opposition Mahagathbandhan or INDIA bloc has not yet arrived at a final seat-sharing formula. Yet the lists released by the parties so far have shown that 'friendly' matches will be witnessed in the upcoming polls.
Amid the internal discord and alleged rifts within the opposition bloc comprising the Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Left parties, including the Communist Party of India (CPI), the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation and the CPI (Marxist) or CPI(M), and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).
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At least 11 assembly seats are set to witness a 'friendly fight' in the Bihar assembly poll, where Congress and RJD, and Congress and CPI candidates will lock horns.
INDIA vs INDIA 'friendly' fight
- Narkatiaganj: Congress's Shashwat Kedar Pandey vs RJD's Deepak Yadav
- Vaishali: Congress's Sanjeev Singh vs RJD's Ajay Kushwaha
- Raja Pakar (SC): Congress's Pratima Kumari vs CPI's Mohit Paswan
- Bachhwara: Congress nominee Prakash Das vs CPI's Awadhesh Kumar Rai
- Biharsharif: Congress's Umer Khan vs CPI's Shiv Prasad Yadav
- Rosera: Congress's BK Ravi vs CPI's Lakshman Paswan
- Lalganj: RJD's Shivani Shukla vs Congress's Aditya Kumar Raja
- Tarapur: RJD's Arun Sah vs VIP candidate Sakaldeo Bind
- Kahalgaon: Congress's Praveen Singh Kushwaha vs RJD's Rajnish Bharti
- Chainpur: RJD's Brij Kishore Bind vs VIP's Balgovind Bind
- Pipra: CPI(ML)L's Anil Kumar vs CPI(M)'s Rajmangal Prasad
For the 243 assembly seats in Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has announced 143 candidates, the Congress has named 60 candidates, CPI announced nine names, CPI(M) four, CPI(ML) Liberation named 20, and VIP announced 15 nominees.
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The Bihar assembly election will be held in two phases, on November 6 and 11, and the results will be announced by the Election Commission on November 14.
The final date to file nominations for the first phase was October 17, and the second phase was October 20. But the final seat-sharing formula of the INDIA bloc is still awaited.
Who said what?
RJD's Bihar unit spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwary told news agency PTI that the party's INDIA bloc partners must understand his party's compulsions.
He said that RJD deserves to contest on the highest number of seats because it is the biggest party in the state.
"I am again saying that alliance partners of the INDIA bloc must understand our compulsions. The RJD is the party which contests only in Bihar and neighbouring states...we don’t demand seats in southern or other states from our partners. As we are the biggest party, we deserve to contest the maximum number of seats in Bihar," Tiwary said.
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He appealed to other INDIA bloc allies to withdraw their candidates from the seats where the RJD has already fielded its candidates.
Meanwhile, Bihar Congress spokesperson Asit Tiwary told the news agency that the party has always followed 'coalition dharma'. He hoped that matters would be resolved in one or two days.
"We have always followed coalition 'dharma'...I must say that the RJD and the Left party fielded their candidates after the Congress had already announced the list of its nominees. We are quite hopeful that things will be sorted out in a day or two," he said.
Earlier on Monday, when the RJD announced all 143 candidates for the Bihar polls, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief and Union minister Chirag Paswan said he had never seen an alliance as big as the Mahagathbandhan be on the verge of ruin.
Speaking to reporters, he further said that there is no such thing as a 'friendly fight' in elections.
"I have never seen such a thing in my life that such a big alliance is on the verge of ruins... If the people of mahagathbandhan are in this delusion that they can field multiple candidates from the same seat, then they should know that there's no such thing as a 'friendly fight'... But now the mahagathbandhan has given us a walkover even on many seats which seemed challenging to us," Paswan, who is part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, said.
