Need more than 3 seats in Bihar since RLSP has gained strength: Kushwaha

Claiming that his Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) has gained significantly in strength in Bihar, Union minister Upendra Kushwaha has demanded that the party be allotted more than three seats in the state by the NDA to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Bihar has 40 Lok Sabha seats and Kushwaha's RLSP had contested and won three seats in the 2014 general election.

"My party had contested three Lok Sabha seats in 2014, but now its strength and base have increased...Our party should be given more than three seats after making a neutral assessment of its strength," Kushwaha told reporters at the RLSP office here Friday.

The Union minister of state for human resource development said there was little doubt that the RLSP had gained in strength, but how much could be a matter of debate.

Replying to a query, Kushwaha admitted that he had raised the demand for more seats with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary and Bihar in-charge Bhupendra Yadav. If need be, he said, he would also speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter.

Kushwaha said the seat-sharing issue between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners in Bihar -- the BJP, the JD(U), the RLSP and the LJP -- was not finalised yet, otherwise it would have been announced.

The BJP had won 22 seats in Bihar in the 2014 general election, while Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) had won six of the seven seats it had contested.

On October 26, BJP chief Amit Shah had announced that the saffron party and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) would contest an equal number of seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Bihar.

Kushwaha asserted that his alliance with the BJP and the LJP was intact but expressed displeasure over Kumar's statement apparently directed at him.

He said the JD(U) chief should retract the statement or explain what he actually meant.

On the seat-sharing issue, with a particular reference to the RLSP, Kumar had recently told a television news channel, "Do not take the debate to such a low level."