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(Bihar Times) With the parliamentary election inching closer the constituents of the two major alliances, the UPA and NDA, started making their bargaining position strong. While the seat-sharing talks between the Janata Dal (United) and BJP failed in Delhi on Thursday, in the UPA the fertilizer minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, whose party may all alone not be able to win a single seat, has emerged as a major irritant. He is demanding at least 16 seats for his party.
Paswan is aware of the fact that he may not be able to win a single seat alone, but has the potentiality to harm the prospect of many in the UPA. In 2004 it was the worst performing party within the UPA winning just four out of eight seats it contested. Thus it won just 50 per cent of the seat it contested against 80 per cent by the RJD––22 out of 26 it fought.
Though other constituents of the UPA are not speaking much what is surprising is that the Lok Janshakti Party had released his list of 20 much before the seat-sharing talks have started. The man who talked of making a Muslim chief minister has given only one ticket to Muslims in the first list of 20 seats, which includes several Muslim-dominated pockets of the North-East Bihar.
In the NDA the wrangling between the Janata Dal (United) and the BJP over the seat-sharing has almost reached its peak. While the BJP contested 16 seats against 24 by the Janata Dal (United) in 2004 this time the latter is demanding 28 seats and giving only 12 to the BJP. The BJP leaders are furious over this big-brotherly attitude of the Janata Dal (United). One of them even went on to say that in such a situation his party would contest 20 seats, which means friendly fight in several places. Once again the BJP’s success rate in 2004 was better than that of the Janata Dal (United). Both the parties won five seats each. However, in the assembly 2005 election the success rate of the Janata Dal was slight better. It won 88 out of 137 assembly seats against 55 out of 106 by the BJP.
The Janata Dal (United) leaders are of the view that the ground reality has changed and more and more people will support their party because of Nitish Kumar. On the other hand they are of the view that the delimitation has changed the character of many constituencies which may favour the ‘secular’ Janata Dal (U) rather than ‘communal’ BJP.
Whatever be their argument the truth is that the Janata Dal (U), like the RJD, is a personality-based party with a bunch of opportunists as the workers, while the BJP is a cadre-based organization with network all over the state. Its organizational network has certainly helped many Janata Dal (United) candidates win the election.
The Janata Dal (United) can in no case afford to antagonize the BJP as in the last couple of weeks the popularity graph of the chief minister himself has taken a beating. Be it the Vikas Yatra or the party’s Chintan Shivir in Rajgir they both have sent a wrong signal forcing him to concede that corruption is a major issue before him.
Though further talks on seat-sharing is going to be held next week and Arun Jaitley likely to come over here in this regard both the NDA and UPA are facing the pangs of going together.
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