Seat sharing suspense in NDA may be over today

New Delhi: After several rounds of parleys with its alliance partners, the suspense over NDA's seat sharing in Bihar for Lok Sabha elections is likely to be over on Saturday.

If sources are to be believed, the much awaited big announcement would be made in the presence of BJP president Amit Shah, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Bhupendra Yadav, LJP's Pashupati Kumar Paras and Chirag Paswan. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may also join the bandwagon, sources said.

"Keeping in mind the significant presence of Dalit voters in most of the parliamentary constituencies, Paswan bargained for a respectable number of seats with alliance partners. Since the challenge for NDA is to win a maximum number of seats in Bihar, BJP and JD(U) pacified LJP with six Lok Sabha seats and one Rajya Sabha membership," the sources said.

"The LJP would get five seats in Bihar and one seat either in Jharkhand or Uttar Pradesh," party insiders said, adding that the Rajya Sabha berth has been sought for Paswan as he wouldn't contest from his home turf – Hajipur this time.

In a new twist to the seat-sharing formula, in contrary to its earlier announcement of contesting on the equal number of seats, the JD(U) and BJP wouldn't contest on an equal number of seats. Sources privy to senior JD(U) leaders said that the seat sharing between both the key partners would of 18 seats and 17 seats instead of 17 seats each.

In the midst of LJP leaders had signalled their resentment with the BJP over a seat-sharing pact in Bihar, Paswan and his son had met BJP president Amit Shah in Delhi to tackle a growing conflict between the allies.