Ganesh Kendale
RANCHI: While the NDA camp has avoided a major inter-party bickering over its seat-sharing formula for the Jharkhand assembly polls, infighting in the INDIA bloc seems to be out in the open. RJD, a junior constituent of the bloc, threatened to go solo but stopped short of breaking up the opposition alliance. Left parties have also upped their ante for a “respectable” share of seats.
The infighting broke out at a time when nomination of candidates for the first phase of polling scheduled on November 13 has already begun.
Even as RJD and Left parties continued to demand “respectable” share despite winning only one seat out of the seven it fought in 2019, both JMM and Congress downplayed the development and said they plan to go ahead with their decision to share 70 among themselves and leave 10 seats for RJD and Left.
Insiders claimed that Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren has again reached out to RJD supremo Lalu Yadav and executive president Tejashwi Yadav on the issue.
RJD, however, set Monday noon as deadline for JMM and Congress to increase and specify seat numbers. RJD said, after the deadline is over, it would announce candidates for 19 seats, considered their stronghold. It, however, would continue to support the bloc’s candidates on the remaining 62 seats, RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson Manoj Jha said.
“After we expressed displeasure over the seat-sharing announcement, we had a meeting at the CM’s residence on Saturday evening, during which we were offered three to four seats. This is unreasonable and unacceptable to our leaders and workers. We are ready to consider about 12 seats,” he added.
Meanwhile, supporters of former minister and senior RJD leader Girinath Singh claimed that he would file his nomination from Garhwa on October 24. JMM’s Mithilesh Thakur, who is also a minister in the incumbent Hemant government, represents Garhwa.
CPI said they would wait until October 22 for talks with the INDIA bloc, failing which they will name their candidates on 15 out of the 81 assembly seats.
Terming the seat-sharing deal announced on Saturday as unilateral, CPI-ML also said they are now in a wait-and-watch mode.
Though JMM and Congress were yet to release their list of candidates, sources said JMM would contest 43 to 45 seats while Congress would contest on around 27 seats, according to their initial talks.
JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharjee said, “Agreements and disagreements do happen within a family. We will sort it out.”
