Updated: October 10, 2020 9:46:59 pm
The meeting, chaired by the head of the BJP, JP Nadda, was held to finalize the list of candidates for the elections. (Source: Twitter / BJP4India)
Less than three weeks before the Bihar Assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Interior Minister Amit Shah and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh attended the BJP Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting held at the headquarters of the party in Delhi on Saturday.
The meeting, chaired by the head of the BJP, JP Nadda, was held to finalize the list of candidates for the elections. Bihar will go to the polls in three phases: October 28, November 3 and November 7. Results will be declared on November 10.
the BJP will contest 110 seats in the 243-member Assembly after yielding 11 seats to the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP). His ally JD (U) has 122 seats, but will contest only 115, leaving the remaining seven for Hindustani Awam Morcha of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who is back in the NDA.
The LJP, led by Chirag Paswan, has left the NDA in Bihar and openly against Nitish Kumar, the main ministerial face of the NDA. Paswan, however, had reiterated the LJP’s position that its winning MLAs will work “under the leadership” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. the death of LJP patriarch Ram Vilas Paswan it will cast a shadow over crucial polls and will influence almost all key stakeholder political movements. Now, with a pillar of that building gone, political leaders in Bihar say there could be consequences for the LJP.
Earlier this week, the BJP published its first list of 27 candidates for the first phase of the elections in which 71 seats will go to the polls. JD (U) had published a list of the 115 candidates.
The JD (U) and the BJP were involved in a tough negotiation over seats and the former was doing its best to remain the main partner in the alliance. It emerged that the JD (U) was pushing for the 2010 Assembly election formula when 141 seats were disputed and the BJP disputed 102 seats. The BJP, however, cited the 2019 Lok Sabha formula of contesting an equal number of seats.
Meanwhile, the opposition led by RJD announced that the party led by Tejashwi Yadav will contest 144 seats while Congress will fight for 70 seats. A total of three left-wing parties will fight from 29 electoral districts: the CPI (ML) with 19 seats, and the CPI and CPI (M) with six and four seats, respectively.
In the 2015 polls, JD (U) and RJD had contested elections together and formed the grand alliance government together with Congress. The RJD had emerged as the largest party with 80 seats, followed by JD (U) with 71, BJP with 53 and Congress with 27 seats, respectively. However, the JD (U) severed its ties with the RJD in 2017 amid corruption charges against the latter and went on to form a government with the BJP.
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