Mahagathbandhan leaders to thrash out seat-sharing in Delhi by Thursday
Patna, Mar 13: Intensive negotiations are on the cards for the opposition grand alliance in Bihar as top leaders of the formation will meet in New Delhi on Wednesday to thrash out the thorny issue of seat-sharing for 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The general election is scheduled to begin on April 11 and will continue till May 19. Polling on the different seats will be held in Bihar in seven phases.
The 'mahagathbandhan', as the grand alliance is called in local parlance, comprises old allies like the Congress and the RJD, besides new entrants such as Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP, Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), Sharad Yadav's Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) and the Vikashsheel Insaan Party (VIP), a fledgling outfit floated by former Bollywood set designer Mukesh Sahni.
The grand alliance also seeks to have an electoral understanding with the Left Front, which has three constituents in Bihar the CPI, the CPI(ML) and the CPI(M), and the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The talks would be centred around a tentative formula wherein the RJD will get the lions share of 17 seats, followed by 11 seats for the Congress and four for the RLSP. The HAM, LJD and VIP would get one seat each, according to sources in grand alliance.
It has also been proposed to leave five seats for the Left parties, the SP and the BSP as a goodwill gesture, which may come in handy for the Congress that has substantial stake in adjoining states of West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.
The sources said the RJD, which is likely to be represented at the Delhi parleys by its heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav, has misgivings over agreeing to the formula which would require it to drastically scale down its stakes.
The RJD had fought on 27 seats in the 2014 general elections, though it managed to win only four.
The Congress has been reportedly playing hardball, threatening to pull out of the alliance and go it alone in the Lok Sabha polls if asked to settle for a formula where it gets less than a quarter of the total number of seats.
Kushwaha, who gave up his ministerial berth in the Narendra Modi government to quit the NDA and join the grand alliance, may find himself vindicated if the RLSP ends up with four seats, which would be twice the number he was reportedly offered by BJP president Amit Shah.
However, Jitan Ram Manjhi's demands that range from "readiness to contest 20 seats" to a number "more than that of even the Congress" or greater than what "later entrants like the RLSP" were to get squirmed when reporters approached him with queries about the tentative formula on Tuesday.
"This is all media speculation. We are sure that we will get a respectable number of seats given the fact that our party has the largest support base after the RJD. But, if we do not get a respectable share we will still work towards strengthening the Mahagathbandhan," he told reporters.
"After the rounds of talks with alliance partners on March 13 and 14, we will be holding our parliamentary board meeting on March 15 where further decisions will be taken," Manjhi said.
The rumblings within the 'mahagathbandhan' is being closely watched by the NDA, comprising the BJP, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP.
"We have already announced that the BJP and the JD(U) will fight 17 seats each leaving the remaining six for the LJP. Announcement of candidates will be made before the notification for the first phase on March 18," a senior NDA leader said, .
"We have no problem with the Mahagathbandhan announcing its nominees before us. They may wallow in the impression of having stolen a march. We would be getting the opportunity to make last-minute strategic decisions," the leader said.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
