A day after the I.N.D.I. Alliance agreed on seat sharing in Bihar, Congress leader Pappu Yadav announced that he would file a Lok Sabha nomination from Purnia, which is allocated to the Rashtriya Janata Dal in the seat sharing. Notably, Pappu Yadav formally merged his political outfit Jan Adhikar Party (Loktantrik) in Congress on 20th March. He said that he was assured a ticket from Purnia by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Pappu Yadav said, “I will contest the Purnea seat on Congress symbol and people will ensure Congress’s win. I will file the nomination. Let the party leadership’s response come. People of Purnia have said ‘Pappu is their son, he won’t go anywhere’. I will have to follow the order (of the people).”
On 29th March, Congress and RJD partnered INDI alliance sealed a seat-sharing agreement in Bihar, with the Congress party stated to contest on nine seats while the lion’s share of the seats, 26 to be precise, going to Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD. Five of the 40 Lok Sabha seats have been allotted between three left parties, namely CPI-ML, CPI, and CPM. RJD, Congress, and Left leaders held a joint press conference on Friday, 29th March, and announced seat allocation.
Congress will be fielding candidates on seats such as Kishanganj, Muzaffarpur, Patna Sahib, and Maharajganj, the RJD will be fighting on Purnea, Hazipur, Gaya, Aurangabad, Darbhanga, Siwan, and Patliputra besides others. CPI-ML will contest from Aarh, Karakat, and Nalanda, CPI from Begusarai, and CPM from Khagaria. RJD leader Bima Bharti, who is contesting from Purnia, dismissed this as a rumour and stated that Pappu Yadav would endorse her candidacy.
She said, “Some people are spreading rumours that he won’t support me and that he would oppose this, but that is not true. He is my guardian and will continue to be so. We share a family relationship and together we will win the Purnia seat with a majority.”
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the RJD failed to secure any seats, whereas the Congress only managed to win one. The seat sharing sealed in Bihar underscored the predicament of the Congress party, which had to meet the demands of a relatively younger political party, RJD, and reduce itself to a single-digit party in a state, epitomising its decline from the national political landscape. Now, this announcement by Pappu Yadav comes as another rift in the I.N.D.I. alliance which has already broken into a bunch of pieces as its constituent parties are opposing each other in multiple states.
