Cong to contest 80 Bihar seats

RJD still hopeful of an alliance

The Congress today matched the posturing of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) by announcing that it will contest 80 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly. Lalu Prasad-led RJD has offered only 35 seats to its coalition partner.

The Congress' unilateral decision, however, does not foreclose on the chances of an alliance with the RJD-Left combine as the Congress has also asserted that it would not field candidates in seats where the RJD and the Left have sitting MLAs. The saga of brink-manship on seat sharing is likely to continue till late tonight.

The RJD, which had last week threatened to go it alone Bihar, did not seem too upset the Congress's decision.

"We have another two days before the last date for filing nominations. We will try till the last moment to get all the secular parties together," said senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad.

Senior RJD leaders, however, said a pact would be possible only when the Congress adopts a more reasonable approach.

Merely not fielding candidates in seats where the RJD had sitting MLAs would not be enough, they said, insisting the Congress should not field candidates in seats where the RJD was the runner-up.

The RJD had won 114 seats in the 2000 Assembly polls in Bihar. At present, however, they have 130 MLAs after some Janata Dal (United) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members joined the RJD.

The Congress had at first demanded 106 seats from the RJD and scaled it down to 84 and then to 70. Party sources said they might be willing to settle for even 50 seats but no less than that.

The RJD has raised the offer from the initial 18-20 seats to 35. Sources said the Congress had sitting MLAs in 18 seats and the RJD was willing to give it another 8-10 seats from amongst the 17 "open" seats. Another 3-4 seats could then be managed with the RJD-backed Congress candidates, sources indicated.

At a meeting with the Left yesterday, Prasad had managed to convince the CPI-M, the CPI and the NCP to ally with the RJD in a secular alliance even if the Congress did not come on board.

The CPI and the CPI(M), which have 5 and 2 sitting MLAs in Bihar respectively, may just end up with more seats than they bargained for if the talks with the Congress fail.

However, at this stage it is not clear whether the Left will intervene to get the Congress and the RJD together so that the 'secular' vote in the state is not split.

Prasad is expected to return to Delhi this evening. Whether he decides to knock on 10 Janpath, Congress President Sonia Gandhi's residence, is yet to be seen.