Seat-sharing talks within the Opposition Mahagathbandhan for the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections have hit a snag after the Congress pressed for what it calls a fair balance between “good” and “bad” seats.
At a press briefing in Delhi, Krishna Allavaru, the Congress in-charge for Bihar, underlined that every state has constituencies considered more winnable than others. “It shouldn’t happen that one party walks away with all the good seats and another is left with the bad ones. There must be balance,” he said.
For Congress, “good” seats are those it won in 2020 or lost narrowly (by margins of around 5,000 votes). “We shall claim the 19 seats we won in the last election, as well as those where our candidates came close. With the energy generated by Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra, we believe these seats are within reach if allies back us,” a senior party leader was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
The concern, the leader added, is that Congress should not be restricted to constituencies where the RJD or other partners have historically struggled, while another party takes all the seats with favourable social equations.
The Congress will bargain hard in lieu of its support to Tejashwi Yadav as the Mahagathbandhan’s CM face. However, if the Congress is given the Deputy CM’s chair, it might settle for fewer seats.
Congress vs RJD: The Numbers
In 2020, Congress contested 70 seats but won only 19, a slide from 2015 when it contested 41 and bagged 27. This time, the party is once again pushing for 70 seats, arguing that Gandhi’s yatra has boosted its momentum.
By its own definition, Congress has 27 “good” seats out of the 70 it fought in 2020 — 19 victories plus eight narrow losses. The RJD, however, holds the strongest claim in the bloc. Out of the 144 seats it contested, it won 75 and finished close in 17 others, giving it 92 “good” seats by the same criteria.
The Left allies also performed relatively well. The CPI(ML-L) contested 19 seats, winning 12 and narrowly losing two. CPI(M) and CPI each won two seats, with one additional seat apiece lost by thin margins.
Seat-Sharing History
In the 2015 election, Congress contested 41 seats and won 27. But in 2020, when the Mahagathbandhan contested jointly, the party was allocated 70 seats, winning only 19. Of the 32 constituencies it had retained from 2015, Congress won 11. But from the 38 additional seats allotted to it, it managed just eight.
Interestingly, four seats that Congress had won in 2015 went to allies in 2020. Meanwhile, the RJD gave up 10 of its sitting seats for partners—five went to CPI(ML-L), three to CPI, and two to Congress.
This time, the alliance has grown larger, now including Hemant Soren’s JMM and Pashupati Kumar Paras’s RLJP alongside RJD, Congress, the Left, and Mukesh Sahani’s VIP.
Allies Tread Carefully
Despite Congress’s push, party secretary Shahnawaz Alam struck a conciliatory note, stated the IE report. “Our Mahagathbandhan is strong. The ultimate goal is to defeat the NDA. Compromises will be made when necessary. That is not an issue,” he was quoted as saying.
The RJD, however, has remained cautious. A senior leader declined to discuss the seat split while negotiations continue. He pointed out that in 2020, the RJD’s decision to give up several sitting seats had backfired, with disgruntled local leaders working against alliance candidates. “Had the RJD contested all its own seats, the Mahagathbandhan would likely have won more,” he said, reported The Indian Express.