The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Sunday announced the seat-sharing deal between BJP and its allies for the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha Polls.
Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janta Dal(United) will contest 17 seats in Bihar. The remaining 6 seats will be contested by Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
Also LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan will not contest the General Elections scheduled in April-May. He might, in turn, get a nomination in Rajya Sabha.
BJP President Amit Shah claimed that NDA will bag more than 31 seats that they grabbed in the 2014 elections.
Bihar sends 40 members to the Lok Sabha. BJP contested on 30 seats in 2014 and bagged 22 out of the total 30. Paswan-led LJP won 6 out of the 7 seats it contested. Also, RSLP, which was then a part of NDA, grabbed all the 3 seats it fought.
Last week, Paswan and his son Chirag went vocal about the growing differences among BJP and its allies. They expressed their disappointment over this and met Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley over the seat-sharing deal.
Also, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar claimed that their party JDU will jointly campaign with BJP and form the government at the Centre. Kumar also appreciated Paswan and attributed the decision of offering him Raj Sabha seat to his long service to the nation.
The opposition leader, Tejaswi Yadav tweeted that the deal proves that NDA is in a bad state in Bihar.
Also, Upendra Kushwaha, who is now an ally of Tejaswi took a dig at Paswan by saying that he “foresees weather”. He also said that Paswan knows that NDA is not going to win a single seat in the state, which is why he asked for Rajya Sabha berth.