NITISH MARKS TURF, A FEW FEET LESS

Seat-sharing talks go chaotic on all sides, JD(U) takes lowest share ever

- By Amitabh Srivastava

ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 14, visitors to 1, Anne Marg—CM Nitish Kumar's official residence in Patna—would have met with an unusual sight. Gopal Mandal, Gopalpur MLA of the Janata Dal (United), was sitting outside on a dharna. The word was that his name had been dropped from the candidates' list. Bihar politics is used to poll-time dramas, but this was emblematic of something larger: the disquiet within the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), where the ambitions of its five partners are going increasingly at cross-purposes. “The only difference between Mandal and the JD(U) is that the MLA can stage a protest; the party cannot,” quips a party leader.

For the record, the very same day, BJP leader and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan was insisting that "99 per cent" of the NDA's seats had been finalised. This was two days after the alliance announced its seat-sharing deal, allocating 101 seats each to the BJP and JD(U), 29 to Chirag Paswan's L.JP (Ram Vilas), and six each to Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha or HAM(S) and Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM).

THE SAME BOGEYMAN