PTI, PATNA/NEW DELHI: As the NDA in Bihar faces the ticklish question of seat sharing for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, major constituents JD(U) and BJP have started building their case for a bigger portion of the 40 seats from the state.
The JD (U) has insisted that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is the leader of the alliance and it has been the “senior partner” in the state, indicating that it should get a major share. Reacting to it, the BJP today said while it agreed Kumar was the face of NDA in Bihar, the Lok Sabha elections will be fought under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, thus staking claim to a major share in the seats.
The question at the core of the debate is whether the poor showing of JD(U) in the last Lok Sabha elections in 2014 when it was out of NDA or whether its much improved showing in the 2015 assembly elections would be taken as the yardstick for deciding the number of seats to be given to the Nitish Kumar-led party in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
While the JD(U) had gone it all alone in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll and won just two sets, it registered an impressive presence in the assembly elections held a year later as a partner of the RJD and the Congress in the Grand Alliance.
In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, when the two fought together, the JD(U) had won 22 out of 25 seats it had contested while the BJP won 12 out of 15.
“Nitish Kumar has always been the leader of the NDA in Bihar. JD(U) has always been the senior coalition partner, the proverbial big brother. There is nothing new in that,” JD(U) spokesman Ajay Alok told reporters here echoing the line taken by party leaders K. C. Tyagi and Pawan Varma after a high-level party meeting yesterday.
Alok was responding to queries over reports in a section of the media that it was resolved at a meeting of the party’s core committee yesterday that “JD(U) will play the role of big brother in Bihar just like the BJP does in Delhi”.
