Ram Vilas Paswan meets Arun Jaitley to talk on seat-sharing

New Delhi: With pressure mounting on the BJP from ally LJP to resolve the seat sharing issue in Bihar, LJP president and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday met senior BJP leader and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley. Both leaders had also met Thursday along with LJP’s Chirag Paswan, BJP’s state incharge Bhupendra Yadav and BJP president Amit Shah at Mr Shah’s residence.

With Bihar chief minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar arriving in the national capital, a clarity on the seat sharing issue could come by Saturday when Mr Shah, Mr Kumar and Mr Paswan are likely to meet. Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP had quit the NDA fold recently over the seat sharing issue.

After the meeting with Mr Jaitley in Parliament, Mr Paswan’s son Chirag, who has been vocal in airing his party’s differences with the BJP, told reporters that talks were on and claimed there were other issues besides sharing of seats. Sources disclosed that other than the Lok Sabha berths, the LJP wants a surety on a Rajya Sabha berth for its president. Mr Chirag Paswan had earlier written a letter to Mr Jaitley asking him to explain what benefits demonetisation brought to the country.  He had also tweeted that a delay in seat-sharing announcement may harm the ruling alliance.

If the LJP is given six seats, as many as it had won in 2014, then the BJP and the JD(U) will contest 17 seats each. There are 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

Mr Shah had earlier announced that his party and the JD(U) will be contesting equal number of seats in the politically crucial state where the BJP-led NDA had won 31 seats in 2014.