Congress calls party's Bihar unit, CLP leader to Delhi

Congress party has called its Bihar unit chief Madan Mohan Jha and CLP leader Sadanand Singh to Delhi on Wednesday, amid seat-sharing discussions with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).

AICC Screening Committee of Bihar will also meet at 3 pm today.

The RJD-Congress-Left alliance is holding final rounds of seat-sharing talks for Bihar assembly elections and an announcement is likely to be made later this week.

Ahead of the announcement, RJD and Congress are pressurizing each other to get more "winnable seats". Sources said negotiations between RJD and Congress are still being held on about 10 seats.

They said RJD is likely to contest about 150 seats in the 243-member assembly.

"Congress will get about 70 seats and the Left parties are will be given around 20 seats," a source told ANI.

The nomination for the first phase of voting in Bihar will start from October 1.

The sources said that it was decided during the beginning of negotiations that seat-sharing will be based on 2015 formula, according to which 41 seats were to go to Congress and 101 seats to RJD.

Of the remaining 101 seats, which were fought by JD-U in 2015, 50 were to be fought by RJD, 30 by Congress and 20 by Left parties.

The sources said Congress has been cautious due to the experience it had in 2019 Lok Sabha elections "when 12 seats were fixed for the party in the alliance but later got only nine seats".

Bihar assembly elections will be held in three phases -- October 28, November 3 and 7 and the counting of votes will take place on November 10.

In the 2015 Assembly polls, JD-U, RJD, and Congress had fought the elections together under the Mahagathbandhan banner. On the other hand, the BJP-led NDA had fought the elections with Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and other allies.

RJD with 80 seats had emerged as the single largest party in the elections, followed by JD-U (71), and BJP (53). However, BJP got the largest vote share (24.42 per cent), followed by RJD with 18.35 per cent and JD-U (16.83 per cent).

Differences later emerged between the RJD and JD-U and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar returned to NDA.

(ANI)

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