File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend a BJP meeting today to select party candidates for the crucial Bihar elections that will be held in five phases from mid-October.
On Monday the BJP announced that it would contest about two-thirds of the state's 243 seats and the rest would be divided among its three regional allies, in a formula that has reportedly left at least one of them miffed.
Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan's
Lok Janshakti Party expressed its unhappiness this morning over the last-minute adjustments made in the alliance's seat-sharing plans to placate another ally, Jitan Ram Manjhi, with some more seats.
The extra seats for Mr Manjhi came not from Mr Paswan's kitty of 40 seats but from the BJP's share. Mr Manjhi had demanded as many seats as Mr Paswan, claiming that he has greater influence among the deprived Dalits and Mahadalits, a sizeable chunk of voters in Bihar.
Sources said Mr Paswan feels Mr Manjhi has been given too much importance.
Amid the internecine tussle, Mr Paswan's son Chirag was in discussions with BJP chief Amit Shah till late into the night yesterday. Chirag Paswan drove out of Mr Shah's Delhi residence at about 2.30 am.
The BJP has divided seats in a way that it can field enough candidates to have a chance at winning a majority, at 122 seats, on its own.
Not only must it win Bihar to obliterate the bitter aftertaste of a devastating defeat in Delhi, but also because it needs to win as many seats as it can to urgently shore up numbers in the Rajya Sabha or upper house in Parliament, where a party's strength in state legislatures determines the number of seats it can win.
The BJP government is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha and has been unable to push critical reforms through Parliament, causing investors to re-assess the Modi government, which won power last year on a promise of economic reforms and more jobs.