“The JD(U) is a bigger party, has 70 MLAs while the BJP has just 50. The assembly polls are to be fought with Nitish Kumar as the NDA face, Kishor said.
Patna: On Sunday Janata Dal(United) national vice president and political strategist Prashant Kishor asserted that his party, being the senior partner in the NDA in Bihar, should contest more seats than the BJP in the assembly election in 2020.
Both parties had contested equal number of seats in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.”In my opinion, the Lok Sabha election formula cannot be repeated in the assembly,” Kishor said.
Kishor has in the recent past rankled the BJP with his continuous outbursts against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
“If we look at the 2010 assembly polls the JD(U) and the BJP had last contested together, the ratio was 1:1.4. Even if there is a slight change this time, it cannot be that both parties contest an equal number of seats.
“The JD(U) is a bigger party, has 70 MLAs while the BJP has just 50. The assembly polls are to be fought with Nitish Kumar as the NDA face, Kishor said.
The election strategist-turned-politician became a full-time member of the JD(U) just about a year ago, dismissed suggestions that his party chief Nitish Kumar might be expected to surrender some ground to the BJP, a favor he had extended in the 2015 assembly elections for Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
“There can be no comparison between the two scenarios. In 2015, in the outgoing assembly, the JD(U) had about 120 MLAs while the RJD had only 20. Since the alliance was an entirely new, many things were factored in,” Kishor said.
“Even if the 2015 assembly elections are taken as benchmark this time, it is unquestionable that JD(U)’s tally was significantly higher than that of the BJP. So my contention of a 1:1.4 ratio holds ground. I am not talking about the total seats that each party could contest. I am talking about the proportion,” Kishor added.
Kishor added that the formula of Lok Sabha elections 2019 wherein JD(U) and BJP had both fought 17 seats each, leaving six for Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), which joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2014, a year after Nitish Kumar’s exit, could not serve as the basis for the assembly polls.
“In 2019 the seat-sharing formula was decided without taking the 2014 poll results into account. I see no reason why a future poll should be decided on the basis of 2019,” he added.
In 2014, the BJP had contested with the LJP and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP and the coalition had bagged 31 out of 40 seats in Bihar with the saffron party alone won 22.
The JD(U) had contested alone and got only two. The remaining seven were bagged by the RJD-Congress-NCP combine. RLSP left the NDA in 2018 and is now a part of the five-party Grand Alliance.
When questioned whether the demand for a greater share of seats was the leverage that Nitish Kumar would use for giving up his opposition to NRC, Kishor replied negatively.
Kishor expressed the opinion that much significance should not be attached to the title like palturam (weathercock) which has been used for Kumar ever since he dumped the RJD-Congress combine and returned to the NDA in 2017.
“Except one or two, you cannot find a politician who has not changed alliance partners in 15-20 years of a political career. So I do not think to single out Nitish Kumar is correct,” Kishor, known to have affective relations with RJD chief Lalu Prasad who first came up with the colorful title, he said.
While the BJP has been screaming for gaining the upper hand in Bihar and putting a stop to playing second fiddle to Nitish Kumar, he said.
“The BJP believes in maintaining protocol, discipline and not making any public comments which have only news value. All the decisions in NDA related to 2020 elections are a matter of discussion between our top brass,” state party spokesperson Nikhil Anand said.
Kishor also repeated his opinions on the CAA and the NRC and he added that National Population Register as a first step to the NRC was unacceptable.
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