Lalu asks Sonia to forge alliance in Bihar

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Sunday appealed to Congress president Sonia Gandhi to finalise an alliance with his party to prevent a victory of "communal forces" in the Lok Sabha polls.

"I would like to appeal to Sonia Gandhi to have faith in us and finalise an alliance to battle communal forces in the election," Lalu Prasad told the media.

Lalu Prasad said the main responsibility of forming an alliance lay with the Congress as it was a big party.

"The Congress should understand that if it failed to ally with the RJD, it will give advantage to the opposite camp."

A RJD-Congress alliance was needed to prevent Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from becoming the prime minister, Lalu Prasad said.

He said some Congress leaders from Bihar may be misleading the party leadership about the prospects of a Congress-RJD coalition.

In contrast to his belligerence a day earlier, the former Bihar chief minister hinted that the RJD was willing to give more seats to the Congress in the state.

"We can give more seats to the Congress if there is a demand for it," he said after a RJD parliamentary board meeting here.

Lalu Prasad had earlier said that he would offer only 11 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar to the Congress and one to the Nationalist Congress Party.

He was said to be upset after Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) ditched him and joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Lalu Prasad's aides say he has learnt a bitter lesson since the last Lok Sabha election when he contemptuously offered only three seats to the Congress.

In December, after being released on bail in the fodder scam, Lalu Prasad, who broke his alliance with the Congress in 2009, said he would not repeat the mistake.

In 2004, the Congress-RJD-LJP combine won 29 Lok Sabha seats. But fighting separately in 2009, the RJD got only four seats and the Congress two. The LJP did not get a single seat.