INDIA bloc alliance seat-sharing talks for Bihar polls likely next month
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc constituents are likely to begin the seat sharing discussion after setting up block-level coordination committees next month, said a senior Congress leader on Sunday.
'We are emphasising on allocation of seats among the allies early, so that joint campaigning for the assembly elections could start. Last time, we missed the majority owing to delayed distribution of seats and lack of proper coordination among local-level leaders,' said a former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA, adding that the block-level coordination committees are likely to be finalised in the second week of June.
The INDIA bloc constituents, including the RJD, Congress, Left parties and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) have formed the district-level coordination committees, comprising prominent leaders of their respective parties on May 18.
'Selection of leaders to lead coordination panel is important as they form the real backbone of the coalition during the elections and ensure turning out of electors at booths,' said RJD spokesperson and MLA Bhai Birendra.
Also Read: Delhi elections a wake-up call for Cong, INDIA bloc
According to a central committee member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), initial talks over seat-sharing may take place at the state-level coordination committee, led by leader of the opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav in Patna.
'After the initial talks, seat sharing formula is likely to be formalized in talks with Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav, Dipankar Bhattacharya and the representatives from the CPI and CPI(M),' he added.
In 2020, the RJD had contested 144 seats and won 75 seats, while the Congress won 19 out of 70 it had fought in the assembly elections. CPI(ML), CPI and CPI(M) had won 12 (out of 19), 2 each of 6 & 4 respectively.
'We will scruitinise each and every seat before allocation, since the Grand Alliance had lost the majority even after getting almost the same votes polled by the NDA,' said one of the coordination committee members.
The RJD-led GA had got around 12,700 votes less than the JD(U)-led NDA in the last assembly polls.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
41 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Syria's Sharaa: from jihadist to statesman
From wanted jihadist to statesman embraced by world leaders, Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has undergone a stunning transformation in just six months since ousting longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad. Born in 1982, Sharaa abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, trimmed his thick beard and swapped fatigues for a suit and tie since his Islamist coalition of forces seized Damascus on December 8. He was proclaimed interim president the following month, and later tasked with leading his country through a five-year transitional period under a temporary constitution that experts and rights groups said concentrates power in his hands. Appearing calm and soft-spoken, Sharaa has sought to shed many of the attributes that once defined him. Gone is the shadowy persona associated with a single mugshot released at the height of the US-led war in Iraq following his capture there by American forces. Videos posted online in recent weeks have shown him, a tall man, playing basketball in a shirt and tie alongside his foreign minister. Others show him driving his car in Damascus, or eating in a working-class restaurant to cheers from passers-by. "I think he has succeeded in his transformation," said Jerome Drevon, a specialist in Islamist militancy at the International Crisis Group. In a matter of months, Sharaa has visited Europe and been "accepted on the whole in the region even by countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that are not at all supporters of Islamists, much less jihadists", he added. The reception Sharaa has received demonstrates "a real recognition of the new authorities", he told AFP. On Sharaa's first trip to the West last month, he met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Just a week later during a trip to Riyadh, he shook hands with US President Donald Trump who announced Washington would lift sanctions on Syria, a triumph for the new authorities. Trump described Sharaa as a "young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter." Sharaa remains under United Nations sanctions and a travel ban, and must request an exemption for all foreign trips. Drevon said that Arab and Western countries had made a pragmatic choice by supporting the young leader. "There are still security problems, there are tensions inside the country, but I think that most foreign countries recognise that right now, there is no alternative," he said. Sharaa has set up in what was once Assad's presidential palace overlooking Damascus, receiving a steady stream of senior foreign officials. During a Muslim holiday around two months ago, he and his wife Latifa al-Droubi, who now appears with him in public on occasion, welcomed Syrian orphans there. While seeking to distance himself from his guerrilla past, he has sought to extract political capital from his rebel roots. Last week, he presided over a cabinet meeting, saying: "We came to power through revolution we aren't used to luxurious palaces." "Until two years ago, I didn't even have an office. We used to meet in the car, on the street, under an olive tree," he added, referring to his time in the former rebel bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria. In January, authorities announced the dissolution of all armed groups, including Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad. HTS was known as the Al-Nusra Front before it broke ties with the Al-Qaeda jihadist network in 2016. Sharaa is "a pragmatic radical", said Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam. Born in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Damascus's upscale Mazzeh district. He started studying medicine but then became associated with underground Islamist circles. Following the US-led invasion of neighbouring Iraq in 2003, he and other Syrians crossed the border to join what they saw as a resistance to foreign occupation. He joined Al-Qaeda there, and was subsequently detained for five years. In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad's rule erupted in Syria, Sharaa returned home and founded the Al-Nusra Front. A realist in his partisans' eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he had no intention of launching attacks against the West unlike his adversaries in the Islamic State jihadist group. In 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, claiming control of swathes of Idlib province. HTS went on to develop a civil administration in the area, amid accusations of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent. sk-lar-at/lg/ser
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Amid row over party leadership, Anbumani, Ramadoss meeting sparks buzz
Amid the ongoing feud in Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK, ally of NDA) between father and son, MP Anbumani Ramadoss met his father and party founder S Ramadoss at their ancestral residence on Thursday but no truce seems to have been called. However, after Anbumani left, RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy and sidelined AIADMK leader and former Chennai mayor Saidai Duraisamy met senior Ramadoss. 'I came to meet my friend. I did not come on behalf of the BJP,' Gurumurthy with Duraisamy next to him told reporters outside Ramadoss' residence (in Villupuram district). When asked what transpired at the meeting that went on for three hours and why they went in after Anbumani left, Gurumurthy said, 'We are friends. We had a lot to talk about. I didn't even know that Anbumani had come here.' However, Anbumani did not speak to reporters after his meeting. The meetings come amid reports that Union home minister Amit Shah is set to visit Tamil Nadu's Madurai on June 8. PMK is an influential party in Tamil Nadu with a 5% core vote bank from the Vanniyar community. Over the decades, PMK has swung between the DMK and AIADMK. On May 29, senior Ramadoss told reporters that he regretted making Anbumani a Union minister (in the UPA-I government) when he was only 35-year-old. He also said that though he wanted to align with the AIADMK, Anbumani and his wife convinced him to stay with the BJP. To be clear, Ramadoss was only confirming on record what has been known off the record ever since the AIADMK left the BJP in 2023 before patching up this April. After the split, those in the NDA including PMK stayed with the BJP with only the DMDK (Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam) taking the AIADMK's side. According to Ramadoss, the PMK and AIADMK are natural allies and said that they would have won 10 seats together in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls which was swept by the ruling DMK-led coalition. His opinion on the alliance doesn't make much of a difference with the AIADMK and BJP having patched up. On April 11, the 85-year-old patriarch took over the party from his son and successor Anbumani. The father made himself president of the PMK once again and announced that Anbumani would be its working president on the day Union home minister Amit Shah arrived in Chennai. On the following day, Shah announced that the BJP and AIADMK have patched up after 19 months and will fight the 2026 elections together. 'He (Ramadoss) wants Anbumani to remain the working president and abide by his decisions,' the PMK leader quoted above said. Anbumani then challenged his father asserting that he continues to be the party chief since he was elected by PMK's general council. Anbumani's Rajya Sabha tenure ends in July and his seat is among the six seats in Tamil Nadu for which biennial elections will be held. Senior Ramadoss accused his son of threatening PMK officer bearers against attending his meeting in which only 13 out of 220 party office bearers turned up on May 16. Ramadoss and Anbumani have been sparring publicly since December 2024. Anbumani had objected to Ramadoss' decision to appoint his nephew, P Mukundan as the youth wing chief of PMK.
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Census was put off due to Covid, its ‘aftershock', says Union govt
The census was put off due to the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted all sectors across the globe, and its 'aftershock', the ministry of home affairs said on Thursday, a day after the Union government announced that the long-delayed exercise will be carried out in two phases before March 1 2027. The ministry also sought to address concerns raised by Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin about Census-linked delimitation exercise, saying that home minister Amit Shah has clarified on many occasions that concerns of southern states will be addressed at an appropriate time. The Census was supposed to be conducted in 2021 and all the preparations for the exercise were completed, a statement from the ministry said. '...however, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country, the Census work was postponed. The aftershock of Covid-19 continued for quite some time,' it said, further explaining that countries which conducted Census immediately after Covid-19 faced issues on 'quality and coverage' of data. While the opposition has questioned the delay in the exercise, the MHA said that had that exercise been conducted in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, it would have adversely affected the education sector. 'COVID disrupted all sectors including education. Around 30 lakh enumerators are needed for Census. Enumerators, who are primary school teachers, are key persons for conducting Census. Conducting Census after Covid could have disrupted primary education immensely,' the statement by the ministry said. The MHA added that the budget has never been a constraint for conducting the Census as allocation of funds is always ensured by the government. India's 16th Census with caste enumeration will be carried out in 2027 with the reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country. It has been decided to conduct the Population Census-2027 in two phases, along with the enumeration of castes, the MHA announced on Wednesday. Following the announcement, the Congress said there was no reason to delay the exercise for another 23 months. In a post on X, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said, '…The Modi Government is capable only of generating headlines, not meeting deadlines.'
