The NDA announced its seat-sharing formula for next month's Assembly polls, with the BJP and Janata Dal (United) to contest 101 seats each in the 243-member Assembly, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Sunday. As part of the deal, Union Minister Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) will fight on 29 seats while the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) and the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) will contest six seats each.
Pradhan, who is the Bihar election in-charge and played a role in delivering a third consecutive win for the BJP in Haryana last year, said the NDA allies in Bihar welcomed the seat allocation and that talks were held in a cordial atmosphere.
"The NDA allies have completed the distribution of seats in a cordial atmosphere. All workers and leaders of NDA parties warmly welcome this. Bihar is ready and a NDA government will be formed again," Pradhan tweeted.
Pradhan's announcement, for now, puts an end to the seat-sharing tussle between the NDA constituents, particularly the HAM, led by Union Minister and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and the RLM, which threatened to go solo in the two-phase Bihar Assembly polls.
Sources suggest that Manjhi was dissatisfied after recent seat-sharing talks, having rejected the formula initially proposed to him. HAM has demanded a minimum of 15 seats, while the party was reportedly offered only seven to eight seats.
Earlier today, Manjhi reached an agreement on the NDA's seat-sharing formula following talks with top BJP leaders in Delhi. Sources earlier told, HAM could contest six seats, a confirmation given by Pradhan in his X post.
As per the seat-sharing deal, HAM is likely to contest in one MLC seat in the future, sources said.
Manjhi indicated that his party would prefer to stay out of the polls if it was not allotted a "respectable number" of seats, clarifying that he was "requesting, not demanding." However, following the agreement on the seat-sharing formula, Manjhi left for Patna.
Meanwhile, the opposition INDIA bloc, which is aiming to end Nitish Kumar's rule, has denied any rift with its constituents and said that seat allocations for each party would be announced soon.
"Everything is well and everything has been done. There will be a press conference tomorrow and everything will be revealed," RJD MLA Bhai Virendra said.
Amid the ongoing tussle between the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a picture of RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and Congress's Akhilesh Prasad Singh chatting along on a plane went viral. Singh was present on the flight from Patna to Delhi on which Lalu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav had travelled.
