PTI, NEW DELHI: Sealing the seat-sharing arrangement for the Lok Sabha elections with Bihar allies, BJP president Amit Shah Sunday announced that his party and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) will contest 17 seats each, while Ram Vilas Paswan-led LJP will fight on the remaining six.
Paswan will be sent to the Rajya Sabha at the earliest opportunity, he told reporters here, following a brief meeting with Kumar and the Lok Janshakti Party chief, who is also a cabinet minister in the Modi government.
Shah asserted that the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will win more than 31 seats it had in 2014 and expressed confidence that it will come back to power in 2019. The state has 40 Lok Sabha seats.
The deal suggests a victory of sorts for the LJP, which had adopted an aggressive stand seeking a better bargain from the BJP after the exit of Upendra Kushwaha-led RLSP from the ruling alliance.
Kumar too has managed to underline his importance for the saffron party, which will now contest on fewer number of seats than it had contested in 2014 and won 22 of them. The BJP will now have to let go of at least five of its winning seats.
