CPI(ML) Liberation seeks five Lok Sabha seats in Bihar

Patna: The CPI(ML) Liberation on Thursday said it wanted to contest five out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar during a meeting with Deputy Chief Minister and RJD de facto leader Tejashwi Yadav.

In a statement, the party said it conveyed its intent to Yadav on Wednesday evening when a delegation comprising three politburo members called on the RJD leader.

A few months earlier, CPI(ML)-L general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya had met Yadav's father and RJD president Lalu Prasad.

After the meeting, he had said his party wanted to contest seats in Saran, Gaya and Shahabad divisions of Bihar, but refrained from disclosing any definite number.

The development brings to the fore competing claims by members of the ruling Mahagathbandhan in Bihar which seem to have made seat-sharing a thorny issue in the state, notwithstanding repeated concerns over "delay" in the exercise expressed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U).

The state has 40 Lok Sabha seats and the ruling coalition has eight parties. In the descending order of their respective strength in the assembly, the constituents are Lalu Prasad's RJD, JD(U), Congress, CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI and CPI(M).

The CPI(ML)-L has 12 members in the 243-strong state assembly and it has been years since it last won a Lok Sabha seat. Nonetheless, CPI(ML)-L leaders insist that the party has the potential, pointing towards its brilliant strike rate in the 2020 assembly polls when it was given only 19 seats to contest.

While other constituents of the coalition have, so far, refrained from going on record about their respective claims, it is clear that the JD(U) would not agree to contest less than 16, its current strength in the Lok Sabha.

JD(U) national general secretary Sanjay Kumar Jha, who has accompanied Nitish Kumar to all meetings of INDIA coalition so far, had said last week "there is no question (to make adjustments) about our 16 sitting seats".

The RJD had drawn a blank in 2019, but it is likely to seek for itself a number that is not less than that of the JD(U), since it is numerically far superior to the latter in the assembly and wants to assert its supremacy in the run up to the 2025 assembly polls when Tejashwi Yadav is expected to lead the Mahagathbandhan charge.

State Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh has said the rumoured offer of only four Lok Sabha seats was not respectable and unlikely to be accepted by the high command. He has, however, hinted that the party would not insist on the same number for itself as in 2019, when it had contested nine, winning one of these.

A Mahagathbandhan leader who did not wish to be named said, "the CPI, too, has indicated that it wants to contest three Lok Sabha seats. The CPI(M) may want its own share. These competing claims have left us in a quandary. These could be accommodated only if we had close to 50 seats".

Meanwhile, the ticket-sharing roadblock appears to have brought to the fore the lack of cohesiveness in the Mahagathabandhan.

While JD(U) leaders keep insisting that time was running out and haste needed to be made, the view has been rejected by other constituents who feel there was no need to hurry up.

The CPI(ML)-L, in its statement after the meeting with Tejashwi Yadav, advised JD(U) leaders to "refrain from unnecessary utterances on seat-sharing which show the coalition in bad light".