Gridlock to ‘Friendly Fights’: INDIA Bloc’s Bihar Seat-Sharing Hits Snags
NEW DELHI: As the election schedule for Bihar is announced, the Opposition’s INDIA alliance is grappling with a difficult internal standoff over seat distribution, raising the specter of “friendly contests” between allies in some key constituencies if a deal isn’t reached soon.
Sources indicate that the negotiations are primarily stalled between the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress party, although disagreements with the Left parties are also proving complex.
The RJD, the dominant regional player, has reportedly offered approximately 54 seats to the Congress. However, the Congress is pushing hard for 10 more seats, staking claims on historically strong constituencies. While efforts are underway to find a middle path, the dispute over both the total count and the quality of seats remains a major hurdle.
Meanwhile, the CPI-ML, which enjoyed the best strike rate among the allies in the previous elections, has rejected the RJD’s offer of 19 seats. The party is demanding closer to 30 seats, leveraging its recent electoral performance to ask for a larger share of the pie. The RJD is generally inclined to offer around 10 seats to the broader Left bloc.
The alliance is attempting to accommodate smaller parties as well. Mukesh Sahni’s VIP (Vikasheel Insaan Party) has been offered 12 seats but is demanding over 20 seats and is also aspiring for the Deputy Chief Minister’s post.
Insiders suggest the RJD is eyeing a figure of approximately 140 seats for itself. The consensus remains that if the RJD agrees to slightly scale back its ambitious count—even by ten seats—the entire sharing process could be significantly smoother. Failure to do so could make “friendly contests”—where alliance partners run against each other in select seats—a distinct and real possibility.
Despite the current complications, sources remain optimistic that the INDIA alliance will finalize the seat-sharing agreement and confirm Tejashwi Yadav as the Chief Ministerial face within the next two days.
