NEW DELHI: The Congress party in Bihar is believed to have struck a deal with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ahead of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, according to which, the grand old party will seek fewer seats in the 2025 Assembly elections in alliance with the RJD as against the numbers it had in the 2020 Assembly elections in the seat-sharing deal. This will amount to meekly accepting junior partner status to the regional party.
In the last Assembly elections, out of the 243 Assembly seats in the state, Congress had contested 70. But it won only 19 seats. The strike rate being poor it led the RJD to accuse the Congress of being the weak link that kept the alliance from forming government in the state. A Congress leader said, “The reason Congress has been accepting the dominance of the RJD is because we don’t want any friction this time. We want to dislodge the current NDA government. Moreover, Lalu Prasad Yadav (RJD chief) has a great influence over the functioning of Congress through the Congress’ state unit president Akhilesh Prasad Singh. But if the Congress gets fewer seats in the Assembly, its organisational base will reduce. Hence, unless the Congress moves away from the alliance, it cannot grow.”
A top official in AICC said, “The decision is a tactical one. We are planning to focus on quality rather than quantity. We will also seek those seats which the RJD hasn’t won in a long time. We will assess the electorate in those constituencies and we will factor in caste needs. So that our strike rate of winning the seats is high.”
Such a deal is seen to have been forwarded by the RJD, which is trying to reduce the influence of the Congress in the state and turn it into its junior partner. However, there is a belief among political analysts that if the Congress continues to have a leadership crunch in the state, RJD will try to eat up its existence and pull out of the alliance before the Assembly elections. A political analyst said, “The steersman of Congress in Bihar right now is someone who serves Lalu more than his superiors in Congress. He has already been trampling over the organisational ethics and rules. Because of that, the rank and file of Congress are not only upset with the leadership but have started to think that Congress prospects in the state are low. It has become a group of dissatisfied people if we look closely. But if there is a change of leadership and meanwhile Congress wins some Lok Sabha seats, it can obstruct RJD’s dominance over Congress in several ways.”
Apart from this, Bihar’s top Congress leadership is of the view that if the opposition alliance is successful in overthrowing the NDA government at the Centre, the BJP-JDU alliance would not last more than six months as the legislators of Janata Dal-United (JDU) would cross over to other parties, eventually breaking down the coalition. However, BJP leaders say that it is just wishful thinking on the part of Congress leaders.
According to political analysts, the RJD does not want to continue with the Congress and wants to expand its political territory on its own, which cannot happen within the framework of the status quo (by being in alliance), and without devouring the Congress’ political space. A senior RJD leader told The Sunday Guardian, “The question should not be about our alliance, it should be about the current government in the state. The way many legislators have crossed over to the BJP in several states, the same way JDU leaders would cross over to other parties (I.N.D.I.A. bloc) looking for greener pastures. We expect to form the government. JDU MLAs believe there is limited scope for the party in future. That is why it will be easy for other parties to tap that sentiment and court them towards theirs.”