Equal seats for BJP, JD(U) in Bihar for 2019 Lok Sabha polls: Amit Shah

Mumbai: In the run-up to the 2019 General Elections, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Friday announced that the BJP and Janta Dal United will contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on an equal number of seats in Bihar.

The announcement came after Shah met JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar on Friday. 

Addressing a press conference, Shah said, "It has been decided that the BJP and JD(U) will fight on equal number of seats for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 in Bihar. Numbers will be announced in a few days."

Other NDA allies, including the LJP and the RLSP, will get due representation in the seat sharing formula, Shah said

He added, "Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Upendra Khushwaha are firmly with the NDA and their parties will get due representation in seat sharing."

The announcement followed a meeting Kumar had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the latter's residence earlier in the day. It marks a climbdown by the BJP, which had contested 30 of the state's 40 seats in the 2014 general elections and won 22, while its two other then allies, LJP and RLSP, had won six and two seats respectively out of seven and three they had fought. 

Sources in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which includes the BJP and its partners, said the BJP and the JD(U) may contest 16 seats each, with six and two to be left for parties led by Paswan and Kushwaha respectively. 

Shah made it clear that the number of seats of all NDA parties in Bihar will come down to accommodate the Janata Dal (United), which had joined the alliance last year after severing ties with the Congress and the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal. 

The JD(U) had fought the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on its own. To a question about whether Kushwaha, whose equation with Kumar is far from cordial, will remain a part of the NDA, Shah answered in affirmative and asserted that the alliance will do better than the last polls when it had won 31 seats. "All four parties will remain part of the NDA," he said. 

Kumar said talks with two other allies are in the last stage and an announcement about the exact number of seats will be made soon. 

The JD(U) had won only two seats in 2014, and the BJP's decision to cede many of its winning seats to give it an equal weightage underscores Kumar's indispensability to it against the RJD-led opposition. 

Since the JD(U) joined hands with the BJP, the regional party had been asserting its senior status in the state citing Kumar's leadership and its better show than the saffron party in the 2015 assembly polls. 

Many BJP leaders were of the view that Kumar was no longer the same force while the BJP had emerged much stronger, a claim which also strained their ties before intervention by the top BJP brass repaired the damage. 

In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, when Kumar was a BJP ally the JD(U) had contested 25 seats and the former 15. Shah said Kumar, Paswan and BJP leader and Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi will lead the alliance's campaign in the state. 

He accused the opposition of running a disinformation campaign against the NDA, and claimed rival parties had no base in Bihar. Kumar said he also discussed drought conditions in his state and its development issues with Modi. 

(With inputs from PTI)