Bihar polls: After Patna, the action shifts to Delhi

After days of tough posturing between leadership of JD-U and RJD in Bihar on the issue of alliance for the Assembly elections, action has now shifted to the national capital, where top leaders from both the parties will meet to thrash out the differences.
While JD-U chief Sharad Yadav arrived here after holding talks with leaders in both the parties in Patna on Friday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today landed in the national capital. RJD Chief Lalu Prasad is arriving at night.
Sources said that while leaders from the two parties can meet tonight or tomorrow to discuss the matter of Bihar alliance ahead of the polls, a meeting can also be held at the residence of SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been chosen by the six splinter groups of the Janta Parivar, including these parties to work out their grand merger plan.

Sources also said that since the issue of merger is time-taking and the parties will need to broach the issue with the Election Commission to thrash out the legalities, the talks among them will primarily focus on finalising an alliance between Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar for the Bihar polls.
Amid speculation over the fate of alliance between the two parties, JD(U) President Sharad Yadav had on Thursday insisted that both the parties will fight the Assembly polls in the state together in alliance with Congress to challenge a resurgent BJP.
"The unity is bound to happen as it is the need of the hour. The nation needs it. All of us will contest election together. Congress, JD-U, RJD, NCP and others will fight together," Yadav had said.

The remarks had come days after a bitter war of words between leaders of the two parties amid a speculation that the RJD chief was not keen to project Nitish Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance.

RJD Vice-President Raghubansh Prasad Singh, who had openly expressed his reservations against declaring Kumar's name as the chief mininister candidate of the alliance outraging the JD-U, had appealed to Congress President Sonia Gandhi to hammer out a solution and give shape to the anti-BJP alliance in Bihar.
The leaders from the two parties are expected meet the Congress leadership here as well.

Sources in the JD-U said, they are confident of an alliance saying, it will happen sooner than later.
Under one of the seat-sharing formulae that is being discussed, both RJD and JD-U could contest 100 seats each while 43 could be left for Congress, CPI-M, CPI and the NCP. Bihar Assembly has 243 seats.