Bihar govt: Rahul holds talk with newly-elected Cong MLAs

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi today held confabulations with newly-elected party MLAs from Bihar, who overwhelmingly favoured party's participation in the government headed by Chief Minister-designate Nitish Kumar.
In the meeting, which was attended by all the 27 MLAs and five MLCs, Gandhi, who is keen to strengthen party organisation in the state, asked them to focus not only in their constituencies but in the entire state to rebuild Congress.
Sources said that Congress could get the post of Speaker in the Assembly besides five ministerial berths. This is the second meeting of Congress leaders Rahul had taken within a week on the issue of government formation in Bihar.

Today's meeting happened a day before Kumar takes oath as the Chief Minister of the state tomorrow. During the hour-long meeting, Gandhi is learnt to have discussed in detail the priority of Congress.
Sources also said that the Congress Vice-President is keen that the party utilises the opportunity of winning 27 seats in the state to expand itself not rest with getting mere ministerial berths.
Rahul had earlier held a meeting on November 13 with AICC general secretary C P Joshi and state's PCC chief Ashok Choudhari during which he had inquired in detail about the gains made by the party in Bihar during the meeting.

On specifics he also wanted to know why the party lost on some seats, which it had earlier bracketed in A category from the winnability point of view. They include seats like Govindganj, Ramnagar, Pranpur and Valmikinagar.

The Grand Alliance of JD(U)-RJD-Congress won 178 seats in Bihar polls, with RJD winning 80 seats, JD(U) 71 and Congress 27.
Besides that of the Chief Minister, there are 35 more berths to be shared, which makes it one portfolio for five seats each.
Congress had contested 41 seats out of 243, as part of the Grand Alliance.
This is almost seven times more against just four seats that it secured in the 2010 polls during which it had contested all the 243 seats.

In fact, Bihar polls is a first major victory for the party after the general elections in May last year that had plummeted its stock to the lowest ever -- a mere 44 in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
The party had not done well in the Assembly polls of Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. In Delhi, it had the ignominy of scoring a duck.
Congress was a dominant force in Bihar till 1989 ruling it for most of the time since Independence barring a few years including those after the Emergency which had brought the undivided Janata Party to power on the call of 'Total Revolution' by socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan.

For over a quarter of a century, Congress has become a marginalised force in the Hindi heartland of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the wake of the 'Mandal' and 'Mandir' surge which saw emergence of the social justice forces and gave strength to the BJP.