Ending speculations though mired with a controversy over one Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, INDIA Bloc Opposition partners on Friday announced that the RJD will contest 26, out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the State while the Congress will contest nine seats, followed by CPI(ML) 3 and CPI and CPI(M) one each.
While seat sharing has already been done in Delhi with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Bloc now awaits to share the deal in Maharashtra among the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena, Sharad Pawar-led NCP and other smaller parties where troubles are galore and stakeholders are making last minute efforts to salvage the alliance to contest in 48 Lok Sabha seats in the State.
As per the announcement, the Congress has been made to give up the Purnea Lok Sabha seat, which recent entrant Pappu Yadav, husband of Rajya Sabha MP Ranjeet Ranjan, was hoping to contest, claiming that he had received assurance of the Congress ticket from Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.
The seat will be contested by the RJD, which recently gave the party ticket to JD(U) turncoat Bima Bharti, but stopped short of announcing it formally.
The Mahagathbandhan’s seat-sharing announcement comes a day after the filing of nomination papers for the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls was over.
The RJD has fielded its candidates in all four seats going to polls in the first phase, in what has been resented by allies as a “unilateral move”.
Notably, the CPI and the CPI(M) have already announced their candidates for Begusarai and Khagaria respectively.
RJD spokesman Manoj Jha who spoke in the presence of State Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh and other allies at the Press conference to announce the seat sharing, maintained, “We have arrived at a unanimous decision and we will win”.
On his part Pappu ruled out the possibility of fighting as a rebel candidate, after the seat went to ally RJD.
Pappu, however, dropped hints of his expectations from the party, as he spoke of “friendly fights” in several constituencies among INDIA Bloc partners.
“I am committed to making Rahul the country’s Prime Minister and helping the Congress revive in Bihar where, five years from now, it will be a force to reckon with in all 40 Lok Sabha constituencies,” Pappu told reporters.
The former MP, who merged his Jan Adhikar Party with the Congress and had claimed that the Purnea ticket was assured to him by Rahul and Priyanka, replied in the negative when he was asked whether he would contest as an Independent.
“All INDIA partners are working together towards a common objective. At many places, they may seem to fight each other. In Wayanad (Kerala), Rahul has been challenged by Annie Raja, the CPI candidate whose husband D Raja is that party’s general secretary,” he said.
