NDA may declare seat shares for Bihar today

New Delhi: The BJP is likely to announce seat sharing arrangement for Bihar polls on Saturday even as last minute jostling by each of the three allies for more representation continued.

BJP sources said that party chief Amit Shah has called a meeting of the core group, which would include election in-charge Ananth Kumar, state in-charge Bhupendra Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan and Sushil Modi, at 11 am on Saturday for a collective assessment of the quota of seats each of the NDA allies would get.

Throughout the day, NDA leaders were huddled in separate groups for giving final touches to the seats sharing, with the hope that the announcement will take place on Saturday.

Amit Shah also took inputs from Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Giriraj Singh at a late night meeting at his



residence.

Earlier in the day, the BJP top brass held another round of discussion with allies the LJP, RLSP and the HAM. BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav had a meeting with LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan.

The three NDA allies have been pitching for a quota of 100 out of the total 243 seats in the Bihar Assembly which would be shared among themselves on the basis of their ground strength.

In that scenario, the BJP will be left to contest on 143 seats which is not acceptable to the party which seeks to achieve majority figure of 122 on its own. The BJP, said party sources, wants to contest on about 160 seats and leave the remaining to be distributed to the three smaller partners – approximately 40 seats to the LJP, about 20-30 to the RLSP and nearly 13 to the HAM.