Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) chief and Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha appears to be struggling to accept his share of Lok Sabha seats in the NDA in Bihar.
After meeting BJP general secretary in charge of Bihar, Bhupendra Yadav, early on Tuesday, he announced that he would take his grievance to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Addressing a press meet after the meeting, Mr. Kushwaha referred to statements by BJP chief Amit Shah about each partner having to “sacrifice” seats. “Well, if we are expected to share in the sacrifice, we should have also been accommodated when it came to sharing the spoils,” he said.
Mr. Kushwaha also announced that his party would be fielding candidates in 66 Assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, a warning shot to partner BJP.
Towards the end of the day, he also met the other NDA partner in Bihar, Ram Vilas Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). The topic of discussion was again seat-distribution in Bihar.
Quashing rumours that he had quit the Union Council of Ministers, Mr. Kushwaha insisted that he was still in search of a “respectable share” in the division of Lok Sabha seats among NDA partners in Bihar for 2019.
The talk of seat sharing gained traction after BJP president Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced that the BJP and Janata Dal (U) would fight an equal number of seats (speculated to be 17 each out of a total of 40 seats in Bihar), and the rest would be divided between Mr. Kushwaha and the LJP. Mr. Kushwaha’s Party was rumoured to be getting only 2 seats under this arrangement.
Mr. Kushwaha has been seen hobnobbing with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejaswi Yadav. He, however, dismissed “Mediapersons were also present there. Tejashwi Yadav came to my room at Circuit House. I went for party-related work and Tejashwi Yadav was already there. We met in the presence of a lot of people,” said Mr Kushwaha.