New Delhi [India], October 7 : Bharatiya Janata Party's Bihar election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan, along with other party leaders, held a meeting with Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan on Tuesday, likely discussing the seat-sharing arrangement for the upcoming Bihar Assembly polls.
Union Minister Pradhan was accompanied by party's Bihar BJP incharge Vinod Tawde and state minister Mangal Pandey as they met with Union Minister Paswan at his residence in Delhi.
Earlier on October 4 and 5, Union Minister Pradhan had gone to Patna to review the preparations of the party for the upcoming elections. The election committee held a meeting with all 18 members at the party's Patna office.
The meeting focused on evaluating 60 "sitting seats" and discussed the performance of current MLAs and potential candidates. Emphasis was placed on prioritising women and youth.
"The Election Committee met at the BJP office. All 18 members, including the election in-charge, and Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, held a three-hour review meeting. Today, we had a discussion on the sitting seats. We were able to discuss about 60 of them. The remaining sitting seats and the lost seats on which the BJP contested will be discussed again", said Bihar BJP President Dilip Jaiswal.
LJP (RV) is part of the National Democratic Alliance, with the BJP, Janata Dal (United) Hindustan Awami Morcha (HAM), Rashtriya Lok Shakti Party (RLSP). The legislative alliance in Bihar is led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Currently, LJP (RV) has no sitting MLA in the Bihar assembly. Earlier, Rajkumar Singh had won on the party's ticket in the 2020 elections, however, he switched over to Janata Dal (United) afterwards.
Earlier in Patna, Janata Dal (United) MP and party's National Working President Sanjay Kumar Jha emphasised that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will contest the Bihar Assembly elections "unitedly".
He said, "The NDA will contest the election unitedly. The biggest issue in these elections is where Bihar will be in the next 25 years after the formation of the Government."
The NDA will be up against the INDIA bloc, led by Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD, the Congress, the CPI (ML) led by Deepankar Bhattacharya, the CPI, the CPM, and Mukesh Sahani's Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP). This time, Bihar will also see the entry of a new player in the form of Prashant Kishor and his party Jan Suraaj.
The Election Commission has announced the schedule for the Bihar Assembly elections. The 243 Assembly seats will go to the polls in two phases on November 6 and November 11, with counting of votes to be held on November 14.