RJD authorises Lalu Prasad Yadav to decide LS candidates, new allies

Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad was on Wednesday "authorised" to take a call on the party's candidates for Lok Sabha polls, besides exploring the possibility of bringing in new allies.

This was announced by Abdul Bari Siddiqui, the RJD's principal national general secretary, after meetings of the party's state parliamentary party and national parliamentary party.

"After both meetings, a one-line proposal was moved that the party president be authorised to decide on candidates as well as explore possibilities of tie-ups with like-minded parties", said Siddiqui.

Replying to a query, he said "no discussions" took place about bringing into the RJD-helmed Mahagathbandhan fold disgruntled NDA ally Pashupati Kumar Paras, who resigned from the Union Cabinet the day before, and former state minister Mukesh Sahni, who heads Vikassheel Insaan Party.

He also said "We realise that we need to be quick on announcing candidates. This is the reason why the national president has been authorised to decide the names so that the process does not get caught up in needless wrangles".

The development comes on a day when notifications have been issued for the first phase of Lok Sabha elections, in which four seats of Bihar, including Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad and Jamui are going to polls.

Incidentally, neither of the two main alliances in the state, the ruling NDA and the opposition Mahagathbandhan, has announced candidates for these four seats.

However, the NDA has come out with its seat-sharing formula as per which the BJP will be contesting two of the aforementioned seats, Aurangabad and Nawada, Jamui will remain with the party of sitting MP Chirag Paswan who has, however, decided to contest from Hajipur this time, and Gaya has gone to former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha.

The NDA also includes Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U), which has got 16 seats, as many as it won in 2019, while former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha has been given Karakat, which he had won in 2014.

The RJD has, at present, the Congress and three Left parties CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI and CPI(M) as its alliance partners.

Earlier, late Tuesday night, former MP Pappu Yadav had called on the RJD supremo here, fuelling speculations of a realignment with the party which had fielded him from Madhepura in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Yadav, whose wife Ranjit Ranjan is a Rajya Sabha MP from Congress, however, dismissed speculations of merger of his Jan Adhikar Party even as he maintained that he had "family relations" with the RJD president and shared Lalu Prasad's "ideological stance against BJP".