At the meeting in Patna, the alliance partners tried to iron out competing claims and identify the seats each party would fight in the Bihar assembly elections, said sources.
Hectic parleys were held between Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) JD(U), Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Congress to arrive at a seat sharing agreement between the members of the anti-BJP grand alliance. The BJP led National Democratic Alliance announced their seat sharing formula today.
According to sources, the alliance partners tried to iron out competing claims and identify the seats each party would fight in the assembly elections scheduled in October-November, a final announcement is expected by tomorrow.
"We are expected to reach a decision on seats each alliance partner would fight by tomorrow evening... There is no hiatus of any kind among us... Effort is on to arrive at a decision on all 243 seats. But if this does not happen we hope to announce seats of parties for the first two phases of elections by tomorrow evening," said RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui.
According to reports, the RJD has identified Mahua and Raghopur seats in Vaishali district for Mr Prasad's two sons, Tej Pratap and Tejaswi Yadav. Both these seats have sitting JD(U) legislators.
The meeting was held at Mr Kumar's residence, Bihar JD(U) President Basistha Narayan Singh told reporters that all parties in the grand alliance should be prepared to make sacrifices, as all of them have got less number of seats than they contested in the previous 2010 election.
Mr Singh said, "We have to make adjustments even on our sitting seats."
JD(U) which had won 116 seats in 2010 has got only 100 seats in the alliance this time, the RJD has been given 100 seats while Congress has got 40. Three seats have now been offered to Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) after the Nationalist Congress Party and the Samajwadi Party declined the offer.