New Delhi: New Delhi, Dec 20: A day after Lok Janshakti Party(LJP)’s Chirag Paswan set a deadline to resolve the NDAs seat sharing forumla in Bihar for the 40 berths that will go to polls during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in the state, LJP supremo and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Chirag Paswan met BJP president Amit Shah at the latter's residence on Thursday.
This was in stark contrast to former NDA ally RLSP’s Upendra Kushwaha, whose requests for a meeting with Mr Shah over the same issue were not heeded. Since then, Mr Kushwaha quit the NDA and joined the Congress led opposition camp on Thursday. Union minister Arun Jaitley and BJP’s state incharge Bhupendra Yadav was also present during the meeting. While the meeting remained inconclusive, Mr Paswan is expected to meet Mr Jaitley again on Friday.
Chirag Paswan, in a tweet, had set December 31 deadline to seal the NDA’s seat sharing formula. Mr Chirag, Paswan sources said, had written a letter to Mr Jaitley with a copy to Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the assembly polls results were announced on December 11 and asked him to list the benefits of demonetisation so that he can “explain” them to people, they said.
The NDA had won 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 but the JD(U) was not part of the NDA then and had rejoined the BJP led alliance in 2017. With Bihar chief minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar expected to be in the national capital on Friday, the NDA allies in Bihar are likely to discuss this pending issue then, which had earlier led to war words between the BJP and JD(U) state leaders.
Sources disclosed the LJP, which had earlier wanted five Lok Sabha seats in the state and a Rajya Sabha berth for Mr Paswan, now wants six seats after RLSP's exit from the NDA.
Mr Shah and the Bihar CM had held a meeting last month after which both had announced that the JD(U) and BJP would contest on equal number of seats. The arrangement, however, had not specified allocation of seats to the LJP and the RLSP, which had upset the latter.
