‘Honourable pact almost sealed with BJP, announcement soon’

PATNA: The Janata Dal (United) is in the final stage of an “honourable agreement” with the Bharatiya Janata Party for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and an official announcement will be made soon, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said on Sunday amid speculations over the contours of the alliance between the two parties.

The remark came two months after Kumar met BJP chief Amit Shah, who put to rest rumours of a rift in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) camp in Bihar.

JD(U) general secretary RCP Singh said the alliance talks had almost been completed. “It (seat-sharing detail) is likely to be announced in a week,” he said in Patna after a state executive meet of the party that inducted election strategist Prashant Kishor into the fold.

A JD(U) leader present at the meet quoted Kumar as saying: “I am in direct contact with Amit Shah over the matter. We will soon reach an honourable agreement (on seat-sharing).”

“We will fight the elections with honour and pride. The NDA will fight the elections unitedly. Do not go by the speculation in the media. We have to focus on winning the maximum number of seats in Bihar,” the leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted the Bihar CM.

Kumar and Shah met in July this year amid buzz of a formula for the distribution of 40 Lok Sabha seats between four partners of the NDA for next year’s general elections. Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party are the two other partners in the state.

The JD(U) contested the 2014 elections separately and managed to win just two Lok Sabha seats. The three other NDA allies in the state won 31 out of the 40 seats in that election. In the 2015 Bihar assembly elections, the JD(U) won 71 of the 101 seats it contested, while the BJP emerged victorious in 53 out of 157 seats in which it fielded candidates.

Sunday’s meet of the JD(U) was the first after the party’s national executive authorised Kumar to take a call on seatsharing with the BJP.