Chirag Paswan meets Nitish Kumar, Upendra Kushwaha calls on Sharad Yadav

PATNA: The tension over seat sharing among NDA partners seemingly headed for a resolution on Monday with LJP parliamentary party secretary general Chirag Paswan meeting CM Nitish Kumar at the latter’s Patna residence and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) chief and Union minister Upendra Kushwaha calling on Nitish’s bête noire Sharad Yadav in Delhi.

While Chirag’s meeting with Nitish seemed to have cemented the LJP-JD (U) bond, Kushwaha appeared to have inched closer to the camp of Congress, Left parties and RJD.

After meeting Sharad, the RLSP chief tweeted, “Nitish has lured away our two MLAs... He wants to destroy Upendra Kushwaha and our party, but he cannot cause any damage to me. He is part of the NDA and so are we. He should not do such things.”

Political observers said the tweet put an additional burden on the BJP to iron out the internal differences of JD (U), LJP and RLSP over seat sharing, if the four-party combine has to remain intact. In fact, RLSP general secretary Madhaw Anand put the BJP national brass on notice: “The ball is in the court of BJP.”

Kushwaha has for long been at loggerheads with Nitish. He dismissed the formula of equal seats for BJP and JD (U) reportedly thrashed out by BJP national president Amit Shah and Nitish, and demanded “three and more seats” for RLSP.

Things came to the fore early this month when Kushwaha accused Nitish of calling him ‘neech’ (lowly man) at a conclave on Bihar’s development. It resulted into protests by Kushwaha caste people and consequent police lathicharge on them in Patna on November 10.

In Patna on Monday, Chirag left nothing to imagination regarding the LJP’s position vis a vis Kushwaha. “He (Kushwaha) should not have brought the differences, whatever they were, in public domain,” Chirag said.

Chirag also expressed his desire to contest from Jamui parliamentary constituency that he represents, trashing rumours that he was likely to shift to Hajipur as his father and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan would go to the Rajya Sabha.

JD (U) poll strategist and vice-president Prashant Kishore made Chirag and former Chakai MLA Sumit Singh, who had earlier fallen out with Ram Vilas, embrace each other in the presence of Nitish. Chakai is an assembly segment of Jamui parliamentary seat.