Exclusive: Grand Alliance on the brink as Tejashwi warns Cong, Sahani mulls exit

With just four days left before the deadline to file nominations for the first phase of the Bihar polls ends, the Opposition’s Grand Alliance is standing on a precipice. Talks among senior leaders of the alliance to finalise their seat-sharing deal ended in a stalemate on Monday (October 13) with a miffed Tejashwi Yadav, RJD leader and de facto CM face of the alliance, returning to Patna from Delhi without meeting Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi.

Also read | Bihar polls: To woo NDA's voter base and rein in allies, Tejashwi expands RJD's caste net

Sources privy to Monday’s seat-sharing talks told The Federal that two major stumbling blocks emerged during the discussions, pushing the alliance to a breaking point. Firstly, as The Federal has been reporting, Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) chief Mukesh Sahani’s refusal to scale down his demand for seats from 30 to a maximum of 18 that the RJD and the Congress are willing to part with has left the alliance leaders convinced that Sahani is planning to exit the bloc. Sahani’s decision to start “handing out symbols” to VIP nominees without there being an official agreement on the seat-sharing deal has irked all allies equally.

Congress stance stuns alliance

What seems to have come as an “unexpected” jolt for the stability of the alliance, however, wasn’t Sahani’s hard bargaining, which, as per alliance leaders who spoke to The Federal, had already been “factored in” before Monday’s meeting, but the Congress’s sudden volte-face. After publicly asserting for months that it was not eyeing a particular number but the quality of seats being offered in the alliance, sources said the Congress harked back to demanding 70 seats from the RJD on Monday, stating that it wants the “2020 formula” to be brought back to the negotiation table.

Tejashwi and RJD leaders Sanjay Yadav and Manoj Jha rejected the suggestion almost as soon as it was made by Congress leaders KC Venugopal, the party’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru and state unit chief Rajesh Ram. At one point in the deliberations, the RJD pointedly told Allavaru that the Congress's insistence on 70 seats was way beyond its strength on the ground. Noting that the Congress had managed to win just 19 of the 70 seats it had contested in 2020 and had “single-handedly stalled the formation of a mahagathbandhan government”, the RJD, it is learnt, told Congress leaders that it was “not going to repeat the same mistake”.

The RJD, sources said, was willing to concede “no more than 58 to 60 seats” to the Congress and that the latter was being “arrogant and impractical in pushing the alliance to a breaking point over 10-12 seats”. Dismissing that the same argument could also be applied to the RJD for not conceding these dozen-odd seats in the interest of the alliance, an RJD leader likened giving away the additional seats to the Congress to a walkover for the NDA in these constituencies. RJD leaders also pointed out that in 2020, the NDA had won just 15 seats more than the Grand Alliance to retain power. The RJD believes giving away a dozen extra seats to the Congress, despite the apprehension of Congress’ defeat in these constituencies, could lead to a repeat of the 2020 poll results.

RJD resists Congress pressure

The Congress, on the other hand, argued that the current electoral situation in Bihar “cannot be compared to 2020” and insisted that the party’s poll prospects had drastically improved because of Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra and the “mobilisation of extremely backward castes, Muslims and Dalits” by the party. Though this was not discussed at Monday’s meeting, sources in Congress told The Federal that the party believes that if Sahani indeed walks out of the alliance as expected, the seats that were being set aside for the VIP should be “evenly split” between other allies.

The RJD, though, doesn’t agree with the Congress’s argument. This is primarily because over the past few days, anticipating Sahani’s exit, the RJD has been trying to expand the alliance’s support base by shoring up the support of other parties and leaders who command influence over different caste groups of the state. As reported by The Federal on October 11, the RJD had been on an induction spree over the past few days, carefully picking out Bhumihar and Kushwaha leaders from the rival NDA bloc. Together, the Bhumihars and Kushwahas make up a voting bloc of nearly nine percent of Bihar’s population.

Also read | How Tejashwi’s job push is testing Nitish’s welfare politics ahead of Bihar polls

Additionally, the RJD had also reached an agreement with Indian Inclusive Party (IIP) chief IP Gupta, who commands an influence over the EBC Tanti-Tatwa bloc, while talks were also on to lasso Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party chief Pashupati Paras into the alliance. The IIP, JMM, and RLJP have each been offered 2 to 3 seats by Tejashwi, making up nearly a third of the seats that Sahani’s VIP was likely to corner if it stayed with the Grand Alliance.

Tensions peak before deal

Sources said before returning to Patna, Tejashwi had sternly warned the Congress that while his party wants an amicable resolution of the seat-sharing talks “by tomorrow (October 14)” so that the alliance can stay intact “in the interest of Bihar”, the RJD “should not be pushed to an extent that breaking the alliance with the Congress is the only way forward”.

Congress insiders maintain that alliance talks were “continuing without any problem” and that a final announcement on the seat-sharing deal is expected in Patna on Tuesday. The Congress has convened a meeting of its central election committee on Tuesday and is expected to release the first list of its candidates, largely including constituencies that go to polls in the first phase on November 6, by Wednesday.

The last-minute turbulence in the Grand Alliance comes at a time when the NDA, which had announced its seat-sharing deal on Sunday (October 12), too, is simmering with discontent. As per the NDA deal, the BJP and Nitish Kumar’s JD-U will both be contesting 101 seats each, while Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party-Ramvilas has been given 29 seats, leaving six seats each for Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha.

Patna braces for showdown

Both Manjhi and Kushwaha have publicly aired their disappointment over being “undervalued” in the NDA, with Kushwaha even stating that the ruling alliance’s victory prospects will be adversely impacted because of the skewed deal. Most intriguing, however, has been Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s deafening silence on the deal, even though his party colleague Sanjay Jha claimed that the alliance was on its way to victory.

Also read | NDA finalises seat-sharing for Bihar polls; BJP, JD(U) to contest 101 each, Chirag gets 29

RJD leaders realise that the discord within the NDA over seat-sharing would play out in the Grand Alliance’s favour, but they also admit that the Congress’s obstinate stand for contesting 70 seats as per the 2020 formula could neutralise any such gains.

With Tejashwi returning to Patna, all eyes will now be on what happens in the Bihar capital on Tuesday (October 14). Will Congress remain adamant on a repeat of the 2020 formula? Will Mukesh Sahani stick to the Grand Alliance or chart a solitary path as he claimed in one of his recent posts on X? Will Tejashwi cede ground to keep the Grand Alliance intact? The answers are expected to come in on Tuesday.