Patna: Ahead of the National Executive meet on Sunday, senior Janata Dal(U) leader KC Tyagi has made it clear that it would contest next year’s Lok Sabha elections as the elder brother.
The party leader also made it clear that it was not willing to give BJP more than 22 seats.
“The JD(U) is the big brother in Bihar and Nitish Kumar’s work is also big. If the BJP spreads word of his good work, it will yield a good result for the party,” another JD(U) leader, Shyam Rajak told News18.
Amid a strain in his ties with the BJP, Nitish Kumar is likely to articulate his party’s position on a host of issues ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls during his addressing its national executive meet.
There has been speculation that he is keen to revive his alliance with the RJD and the Congress, a suggestion rejected by his party leaders but which has gained ground due to the JD(U)’s differences with the BJP.
Several leaders of the Bihar-based party have demanded its preeminent position in the BJP-led NDA restored, a status it enjoyed in the alliance until 2013 when Kumar broke ties with the saffron party.
The BJP had won 22 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and its allies, Ram Vilas Paswan-led LJP and Upendra Kushwaha-led RLSP had six and three respectively. The JD(U) had won only two seats.
Senior BJP leaders including former union minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain have ruled out having any differences saying, “The NDA is strong in Bihar.”
The Janata Dal (United) (JD-U) stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is free to contest from all 40 seats in the state alone, if it does not need help from its alliances.
“If the BJP does not need the help of its alliance partners, then it can fight on all 40 seats alone. Nobody is stopping them. Every party has a decision of its own. If they want to take a decision, they can take it. There is no problem,” JD (U) state chief spokesperson Sanjay Singh told ANI.
Earlier last month, a senior JD(U) leader asserted that the BJP-led coalition would suffer in Bihar if Lok Sabha polls were not fought under the Chief Ministers leadership, even as Nitish Kumar sought to distance himself from raging political discourse within NDA over seat-sharing.