NEW DELHI: While a seat-sharing deal is yet to be announced by INDIA bloc, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav on Monday jumped the gun and gave away party tickets to candidates favoured by him.A large crowd gathered outside Lalu’s residence after he reached Patna from Delhi, where he had appeared before a court. According to news agency PTI, aspirants who apparently received phone calls from the party began pouring in, only to emerge minutes later with the party symbol in their hands and a broad smile on their faces.Prominent among those who got RJD symbols were Sunil Singh (Parbatta), who quit chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) last week, and Narendra Kumar Singh alias Bogo, a several-term former MLA from Matihani, who had won the seat twice for the party headed by the CM.However, Lalu’s son Tejashwi, who is also Mahagathbandhan’s chairman was supposedly upset with his father’s decision. He stopped the distribution well past midnight and asked the leaders to return the party symbols.Tejashwi told his father that photographs and video clips of party candidates with the symbol could not go down well with alliance partners with whom a deal was yet to be struck, PTI reported citing sources.This is not the first time Lalu has distributed tickets to his party leaders without a nod from alliance partners. Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he had given tickets to several RJD leaders well before Congress, RJD, and Left parties had reached a seat-sharing agreement. However, the alliance partners eventually fell in line.This comes as Lalu’s son Tejashwi met Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi on Monday evening and is learnt to have discussed a seat-sharing arrangement ahead of the Bihar assembly polls. Congress general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and the party’s in-charge for Bihar, Krishna Allavaru, were present during the meeting at Kharge’s residence, PTI reported, citing sources.Sources said Tejashwi Yadav had earlier held discussions with Allavaru and Venugopal, where Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Ram and CLP leader in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha Shakeel Ahmad Khan were also present.The Mahagathbandhan in Bihar is likely to make a formal announcement “latest by Tuesday evening” since Tejashwi was himself likely to file his nomination papers from Raghopur on Wednesday.In the upcoming elections, Congress is likely to get fewer seats than last time due to its dismal performance in the 2020 assembly polls, when it won 19 out of the 70 seats it contested. The RJD contested 144 seats and bagged 75 in the 243-member assembly.On the other side, BJP state in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday announced that JD(U) and BJP will contest 101 seats each; Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vikas) on 29 seats; and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) of Jitan Ram Manjhi and the Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) of Upendra Kushwaha will contest six seats each.Bihar assembly polls are slated in two phases on November 6 and 11, and the counting of votes will be conducted on November 14. The filing of nominations began on October 10 for the first phase, in which 121 seats will go to the polls.
