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Ending suspense over the issue of a tie-up, Bihar's ruling Janata Dal-United and Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal on Sunday decided to contest the state assembly elections in alliance and constitute a six member committee to finalize seat-sharing.
“It has been decided in today's meeting that a committee of three members each from RJD and JD-U will decide seat sharing and leaders of both parties will give a final shape to it. It has been decided now that both parties will fight the election in Bihar in alliance,” Samajwadi Party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said.
He was talking to reporters after a two-hour long meeting between Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad at the residence of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was approached by the two parties to broker peace after days of sparring between leaders of the two parties.
Asked about the contentious issue of chief ministership, the SP general secretary said, “There is no dispute (Koi gahma gahmi nahin hai). These things will be taken care of later. The real thing is seat sharing...”
Emerging from the meeting Ram Gopal expressed confidence that the leaders of the two parties will complete the task of devising an effective seat-sharing arrangement very soon.
The SP general secretary was reading from a resolution adopted at the meeting which was also read out separately by JD-U general secretary K C Tyagi. Leaders from the three parties refused to elaborate on the matter further. These decisions were taken after back to back meetings here.
Nitish Kumar, who had arrived in the national capital yesterday, drove down to the residence of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi where they held discussions for almost an hour-and-a-half. RJD chief Prasad had landed in the national captial when Kumar was meeting Rahul.
After weeks of sparring by leaders of their parties, Kumar and Prasad, who had not met for quite some time, on Sunday sat across the table at Mulayam's residence in order to remove the irritants in the path of forging an alliance to thwart the Bharatiya Janata Party's attempt to wrest power in the politically sensitive state.
Congress has lent its weight behind the Bihar Chief Minister, making it clear that while it would like a grand alliance with Lalu and Kumar, it would rally around the latter if an alliance between the two Bihar-centric parties fails to materialise.
While Kumar immediately left for Patna after the meeting, Lalu Prasad stayed on and was later joined by Sharad Yadav for another round of talks at Mulayam's residence. Kumar, who came out of the meeting smiling, did not talk to reporters.
Kumar, who stayed in Bihar Bhavan, drove to residence of party MP RCP Singh in the morning. All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge for the state CP Joshi, who had met Kumar last evening as well, arrived there.
The three later went to Rahul's residence. As the war of words between state leaders of the two Bihar parties intensified, Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar yesterday said in Jamshedpur that BJP was trying all ways to break the JD-U-Congress-RJD alliance and was "pressuring" an MP of Lalu's party under CBI scanner in connection with the coal scam, for the job. The same day in Patna, Lalu Prasad hit out at the BJP and RSS for speculating about his party's tie-up with JD-U, saying they were "more worried about the alliance" owing to "fear of defeat."