The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Lok Janshakti Party have reached a seat-sharing agreement in Bihar for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan said Wednesday, reported NDTV.
The details of the agreement will be announced at an “appropriate time”, Paswan said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself with BJP President JP Nadda.
The development comes amid reports that the INDIA bloc, a coalition of Opposition parties that hopes to take on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha polls, had started talks with Paswan’s party last week.
The BJP reportedly offered Paswan’s party eight Lok Sabha seats, including the six that the party had won in Bihar during general elections in 2019, and two other seats in Uttar Pradesh.
As per this arrangement with the BJP, Paswan will not be expected to share any of the seats with his estranged uncle and Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, who leads the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party, a breakaway faction the party.
The Lok Janshakti Party plunged into a crisis in June 2021 when five of its six Lok Sabha MPs rebelled against Paswan and told Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla that they had chosen Paras as the party’s leader in Parliament. Birla had accepted Paras as the floor leader of the party in the Lok Sabha.
After this, the party split into two: the Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and the Paras-led Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party.
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