"15 Seats Or Won't Contest": BJP Ally's Big Warning Ahead Of Bihar Polls

In signs of unease within the NDA ahead of the Bihar election, ally Jitan Ram Manjhi has said that if his party, Hindustan Awam Morcha, is not given at least 15 seats to contest, it won't fight the elections at all. The former Chief Minister, however, has made it clear that it would stay in the NDA camp. BJP chief JP Nadda, it is learnt, has spoken to Manjhi to pacify him.

"We are praying to NDA leaders because we feel humiliated. We need a respectable number of seats so that we get recognition as a party. If we do not get the proposed number of seats, we will not contest the election. We will support NDA, but we won't contest the election. I don't want to become Chief Minister. I just want our party to be recognised," he said.

Earlier, dropping broad hints over his party's demand in the NDA's seat-sharing talks for the Bihar election, Manjhi tweaked legendary poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's lines to say he wants "15 "villages"—meaning 15 seats.

In a post on X this morning, Manjhi quoted lines from Dinkar's classic war poem Rashmirathi, with a minor tweak. Rashmirathi narrates a last-ditch attempt by Lord Krishna to prevent the Mahabharata battle. "Ho nyay agar to aadha do, yadi usmein bhi koi badha ho, to de do keval 15 gram, rakho apni dharti tamam, HAM wahi khushi se khayenge, parijan pe asi na uthayenge," Manjhi said in a post on X. The lines loosely translate to 'Give us just 15 villages and keep everything else. HAM will be happy and won't raise arms against our own.' In the original poem, Dinkar wrote '5 gram' -- 5 villages for as many Pandava brothers. Manjhi replaced this with 15.

The NDA allies are yet to announce their seat-sharing formula for the Bihar election next month. According to sources, JDU and BJP may contest about 100 seats each out of the 243 seats. Chirag Paswan's LJP (Ram Vilas) may get 24, Manjhi's party 10 and Upendra Kushwaha's party may be allotted about six. Besides Manjhi, even Chirag Paswan is not happy with this figure and has been pushing for at least 40 seats.