BJP BENDS TO KEEP IT TOGETHER
A defensive BJP gives up 13 more seats to allies JD(U), LJP to stay competitive for Lok Sabha 2019
While the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has sealed its final seat-sharing arrangement in Bihar for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, speculation continues over what may have pushed BJP president Amit Shah to concede 13 of the 30 seats the party contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll. The BJP will this time contest only 17 of the total 40 seats, at par with the Janata Dal (United), while Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) will contest six.
In 2014, the BJP contested 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state and won 22. However, in this scale-down, “at least five sitting MPs of the party would be denied tickets”, says a BJP leader in Patna. “Parties often change candidates and swap their constituencies to neutralise anti-incumbency, but the
BJP has done something entirely different in Bihar. The party leadership has just given up on its sitting MPs. It cannot be without reason,” he adds.
Top BJP sources in Bihar admit that the party is not likely to give tickets to Patna Sahib MP Shatrughan Sinha and Darbhanga MP Kirti
Azad. The death of
Begusarai MP Bhola
Singh has created another vacancy and Madhubani MP Hukmdev Narayan Yadav has hinted at not contesting the Lok Sabha election. And in a few seats, the party is likely to switch some candidates and field new faces.
Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) appears to have succeeded in raising its stock. The party that has just two sitting Lok Sabha MPs will be contesting 17 seats. The LJP is no loser either. It contested seven seats in 2014 and will contest one less this time, but has been assured a seventh MP via the Rajya Sabha route.
While Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress leaders in Patna described the NDA seat distribution as a capitulation by the BJP, the saffron party’s two allies—JD(U) and LJP—appear to be in no mood to oblige the BJP as a quid pro quo for its ‘magnanimity’. Only days after the seat distribution, the JD(U) opposed the triple talaq bill in Parliament while Paswan has openly reiterated his aversion to the notion that the Centre may bring in an ordinance to facilitate the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Clearly, the two allies remain assertively opposed to some of the core issues on the BJP agenda.
On paper, of course, the arithmetic from the 2014 election is formidable since the BJP had secured 29.9 per cent of the vote, the JD(U) 16 per cent and the LJP 6.5 per cent. That adds up to more than a 52 per cent vote share and gives the NDA a good start for the 2019 Lok Sabha battle.
But, as a senior JD(U) leader says, “If the BJP is still bending over backwards to accommodate its allies, it clearly means that they don’t find any solace in the vote arithmetic or past performance, because it is the chemistry with voters that seems to be troubling them.”