On a day it lost its Bihar ally Upendra Kushwaha to the opposition alliance led by Congress, BJP was on a damage control mode on Thursday as party president Amit Shah is meeting Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan in Delhi.
After BJP’s defeat in the recent assembly polls in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Paswan and his son Chirag have sought to impress upon its ally to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement in Bihar for 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Speaking at an event on Wednesday evening, Chirag, the MP from Bihar’s Jamui constituency, had warned that NDA to stick to the development agenda and address concerns of other allies, or continue to reap losses.
“If we stick to vikas as our agenda for 2019, we will repeat the 2014 mandate, otherwise we would should continue to bear losses,” he said.
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar is also likely to travel to Delhi on Friday evening in what is being seen as an attempt to finalise seat-sharing formula for the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
BJP president Amit Shah and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar after a meeting last month had announced that JD(U) and BJP would contest equal number of seats. The arrangement, however, did not specify allocation of seats of Paswan’s LJP and Kushwaha’s RLSP.
RLSP has since parted ways with the NDA accusing the BJP and the JD(U) of neglecting the interests of Bihar.
Keeping the disenchantment of the allies in mind, Paswan tweeted, “After the exit of TDP and RLSP, the NDA is going through a sensitive phase. The BJP should act on the issues of other allies and resolve them in a respectful manner before it’s too late.”