Bihar’s opposition, the Grand Alliance, reached an agreement on Saturday to share seats for the upcoming state assembly elections and announced Tejashwi Yadav as its top ministerial candidate.
“All components of the UPA have decided to come together as a coalition for the Bihar Assembly elections. Congress, RJD, CPI, CPI (M) and Vikassheel Insaan Party will be part of this alliance under the leadership of RJD. We want Bihar prosper under Tejashwi Yadav, “said Congressional Leader Avinash Pandey.
In addition to the RJD, which heads the opposition coalition, Congress, the left-wing CPI-ML, CPI and CPI (M) parties, Bollywood set designer Mukesh Sahni’s Vikasheel Insan Party (VIP) and the ruling Jharkhand party , JMM, will fight together against Bihar elections scheduled for October-November.
Congress has been offered 70 seats, CPI-ML 19, CPI and CPI (M) in total 10, while the remaining seats in the 243-member assembly will be contested by Lalu Prasad’s party, his son Tejashwi said.
RJD will accommodate Mukesh Sahni’s VIP and JMM in its 144-seat quota, Tejashwi Yadav said.
Congress will also present its candidate in the Valmiki Nagar Lok Sabha seat, where a by-vote will take place on November 7.
The Electoral Commission announced that the Bihar Assembly elections will be held in three phases: October 28, November 3, and November 7. The vote count will take place on November 10.
Before the State Assembly elections here, the head of the Bihar unit of the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Bharat Bind, joined Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Saturday.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav brought Bind into the party.
Earlier, the supreme of the BSP, Mayawati, had announced that her party will fight against the next elections in Bihar in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) and former union minister Upendra Kushwaha will be the main ministerial candidate.
Yadav vowed to evict the government led by Nitish Kumar, whom Congress leader Avinash Pandey accused in his speech of “apharan” (kidnapping) from the mandate in previous elections. The head of JD (U) had fought in the 2015 elections opposing the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but ended up with the saffron party, Pandey said.
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