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Bihar Assembly Election 2020: HAM-S seals deal with JD(U), all eyes on BJP-LJP
HAM-S, which had aligned with the JD (U) following its exit from the Grand Alliance, comprising the main opposition in the state the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and some Left parties, will contest in 10 constituencies in the 243-seat Bihar legislative assembly
Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S) has entered a seat-sharing agreement with the ruling Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), in the poll-bound state.
The deal was brokered amid an uncertainty over the next move of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), which will get its quota of seats to contest the upcoming assembly polls as an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre.
The NDA is yet to announce a seat-sharing deal involving all its constituents amid growing differences between the JD(U) and the LJP, which has been questioning chief minister Nitish Kumar’s style of functioning.
HAM-S, which aligned with the JD (U) following its exit from the Grand Alliance (GA) --- comprising the main opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress and some Left parties --- will contest 10 constituencies in the 243-seat Bihar assembly.
Of the 10 seats, three HAM-S candidates would contest on the JD(U) symbol, said party spokesman Danish Rizwan. He said the party would like eight candidates to contest on its symbol.
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HAM-S parliamentary board meeting will be held on Sunday afternoon to decide on the names of the candidates.
Earlier, Majhi had maintained that his return to the Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) fold was unconditional because of a “mutual understanding”.
Manjhi will contest from the Imamganj assembly seat in Gaya district. Manjhi confirmed that he would contest from Imamganj, but refused to share details about the candidates of the other nine seats.
“BJP parliamentary board meeting is slated to be held in Delhi today. Our meeting will also be held this afternoon. I shall speak about who will contest from which seat after the meeting,” he said.
Imamganj was the only seat that the HAM-S won in 2015 when Manjhi defeated JD(U)’s Uday Narain Chaudhary. However, he lost from Makhdumpur, from where his son-in-law is tipped to be the candidate in the upcoming assembly polls.
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Kumar had made Manjhi the Bihar CM in May 2014, though the latter had to quit the following year after the two leaders came face to face in the assembly polls.
Manjhi was a part of the cabinet of seven Bihar CMs, including four from the Congress, in his political career spanning over four decades.
His induction into the JD(U) fold was seen as an attempt to neutralise the LJP’s growing political ambitions.
In 2015, the HAM-S was part of the NDA and had contested in 21 assembly seats. But, the regional party had managed to win only one seat that of Majhi’s. It had a vote share of 2.2% in 2015 assembly polls.
Political analyst Ajay Jha said that the upcoming Bihar assembly polls were taking an interesting turn because of the emergence of new political equations at the last minute ahead of the elections. “Pre-poll arrangements are likely to be guided by post-poll possibilities,” he added.
The elections in Bihar will be held in three phases on October 28, November 3 and 7.
The results will be declared on November 10.
