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No easy options for Cong in Bihar
No easy options for Cong in Bihar. Faced with no easy options in Bihar, where assembly polls are scheduled later this year, a section of the Congress is in favour of joining a possible alliance between the JD-U and RJD and another wanting to go it alone.
New Delhi: Faced with no easy options in Bihar, where assembly polls are scheduled later this year, a section of the Congress is in favour of joining a possible alliance between the JD-U and RJD and another wanting to go it alone. "There are two views in the party. One is that we should go for alliance at it would help in stopping BJP from coming to power, a primary aim of the party. The other opinion is that the party should contest all 243 seats and build its cadre.
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It may not yield dividends in this election but will benefit the party in the long term," a party leader said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media. "The present situation is of wait and watch. We are seeing how JD-U and RJD finalise their relationship," Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad said. Ahmad, a former Bihar Congress president, said that the picture should be clear in about a month.
The assembly polls are expected in September-October and do not offer easy options for the Congress as it has not fared well in the state in the past few elections. The Bihar poll will be the first after the Narendra Modi government has completed a year in office and is vital for the Congress in its efforts at revival. The results are expected to have a wider political resonance amid efforts by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to cast the National Democratic Alliance government as "anti-farmer" and "anti-poor".
The JD-U and RJD were among six parties that had announced their merger into a single entity last month with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as the president. However, the unity efforts do not appear to have made much headway since then. Amid "technical problems" related to the merger, feelers from the RJD on seat sharing appear to have already caused some heartburn in the JD-U. The claim of RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad that his party will contest 143 seats had peeved Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who last week asked the RJD to contest all the 243 seats in the state.
A Congress leader said that the party's joining hands with the JD-U or the RJD will also depend on the number of seats it is offered. The JD-U had won 115 seats in the last assembly polls which it had fought in alliance with the BJP. The BJP had won 91 seats as the alliance swept the State, reducing the RJD to just 22 seats and the Congress to four. However, differences over the elevation of Narendra Modi in the BJP led to the JD-U walking out of the alliance in 2013.
"It would be better if there is no merger and JD-U and RJD contest the polls as allies. Merger at this stage will not lead to meeting of minds of workers at the grassroots and may end up helping the NDA," a Congress functionary said, adding that the chief ministerial candidate should not be declared. The Congress had won four of the 243 seats it contested in the last elections and nine of the 51 seats it had contested in 2005.
