NDA, INDIA working out seat-sharing; PK steals a march with starting campaign from Tejashwi's seat

Patna, Oct 11 (PTI) The Jan Suraaj Party continued to steal a march, ahead of assembly polls, over the ruling NDA and the main opposition INDIA bloc, with its founder Prashant Kishor on Saturday launching election campaign from Raghopur, the home turf of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav.

Senior BJP's leaders of the state, including president Dilip Jaiswal and former provincial chiefs Samrat Choudhary and Mangal Pandey, were camping in Delhi, holding meetings with top leaders as well as alliance partners.

Jaiswal told reporters in the national capital: "It is unfortunate that the social media is replete with imaginary seat-sharing figures. Our ally Upendra Kushwaha has come out with an anguished tweet. Let all be informed that talks are still on and an announcement is likely by tomorrow".

Kushwaha, a Rajya Sabha MP who heads the Rashtriya Lok Morcha, had responded to reports in a section of the media that his party has been asked to settle for a single-digit share of seats of the 243-strong assembly.

The reports also suggest that the JD(U), headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and the BJP, will contest almost an equal number of seats, in the range of 101-102, while about 30 will be given to Union minister Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas).

Another NDA partner Jitan Ram Manjhi, who has been pressing for "at least 15 seats" for his Hindustani Awam Morcha, is said to have been asked to settle for seven or eight.

Jaiswal was also asked whether the "announcement" would be made in Delhi itself or in Patna.

He replied: "We will discuss with our allies. Many leaders are away in their constituencies. We will decide on the venue once we get an idea where most of the leaders, whose presence will be required, could be easily available".

Late in the evening, JD(U) working president Sanjay Kumar Jha, who spent the day here re-inducting a former party MP and, thereafter, holding deliberations with the chief minister, left for Delhi.

Talking to reporters before boarding his flight, Jha mocked Yadav's promise of "government job to one member of every household", and wondered whether "any economist across the world" would approve of such a scheme.

Jha also alleged that the promise smacked of "desperation on part of the RJD-helmed opposition which was outperformed by the NDA in Lok Sabha polls last year and, again, in assembly by-polls a few months later." RJD sources, however, taunted the JD(U) for re-inducting Arun Kumar, a former two-term JD(U) MP from Jehanabad, who had hit the headlines a few years ago for threatening, in a public speech, to "break the ribs of Nitish Kumar".

The sources were of the view that the CM swallowed a bitter pill, unnerved by the opposition party's aggressive outreach towards Bhumihars, a powerful upper caste group that is known to support the BJP-led coalition.

In the past one week, the party has weaned away more than one prominent Bhumihar leader from the JD(U), including Sanjeev Singh, the sitting MLA from Parbatta, and Rahul Sharma, a former MLA from Ghosi, whose father Jagdish Sharma had represented the assembly seat a record eight times.

Disgruntled leaders from other communities, too, have been quitting, severing their ties with the JD(U). On Saturday morning, MLA Mishri Lal Yadav resigned from the BJP, amid speculations that the party may field folk singer Maithili Thakur from his Aliganj seat.

On Friday, besides Rahul Sharma, others who joined the RJD in presence of Tejashwi Yadav included Chanakya Prakash Ranjan, whose father Girdhari Yadav is the sitting second-term MP from Banka, still with JD(U).

Besides, a couple of days ago, Lakshmeshwar Roy, the JD(U) MLA from Laukaha in East Champaran district had announced that he would be joining the RJD.

Similar hints have been dropped by Gopal Mandal, the MLA from Gopalpur in Bhagalpur.

All these may have caused an upbeat mood at the house of Tejashwi Yadav's father Lalu Prasad, the RJD supremo, with a long queue of aspirants seen in front of his bungalow, right across the street from the chief minister's residence, almost the entire day.

However, Kishor, who takes pride in the fact that "only Jan Suraaj Party" has so far released a list of its 51 candidates, hopes that his one-year-old party will turn the tables on the father-son duo.

Referring to rumours that Tejashwi Yadav was planning to contest from more than one seat, Kishor, who launched his campaign from the former's assembly constituency Raghopur, remarked: "He may end up meeting the same fate as his ally Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, who in 2019 managed to win from Wayanad but lost his pocket borough of Amethi. PTI TEAM NAC NN