Nitish Kumar, Amit Shah hold seat-sharing talks

PATNA: JD(U) president Nitish Kumar on Wednesday called on BJP chief Amit Shah at his residence in New Delhi to iron out certain issues that still remained unresolved between the two NDA partners on seat-sharing for 2019

Lok Sabha

polls in Bihar.

BJP general secretary and Bihar in charge Bhupendra Yadav was also present during the meeting, which lasted for nearly 30 minutes.

Immediately after their meeting, Shah met Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, who was BJP’s Bihar in charge during the 2010 assembly polls and enjoys a very good personal rapport with Nitish. Shah reportedly discussed with Jaitley certain seats on which both the BJP and JD(U) are claimants, BJP sources told TOI. It could not be immediately known as to what exactly transpired in the meeting.

JD(U) national general secretary K C Tyagi told TOI that the meeting took place in a very congenial atmosphere and the JD(U) chief was happy over the talks.

After his meeting with Shah, Nitish had a closed-door meeting with senior JD(U) leaders, including Tyagi, former Rajya Sabha member Pavan Kumar Varma and Prashant Kishor at Bihar Bhavan. “Though Nitish didn’t reveal the number of seats the JD(U) would contest in the Lok Sabha polls, we are hopeful that the seat-sharing between the NDA partners will be announced very soon,” Tyagi said.

Nitish went to Delhi on Monday, a day after he told his party’s state executive body that he and Shah had worked out the seat-sharing formula for the coming Lok Sabha polls and the JD(U) had got a “respectable share”.

At the same executive body meeting, poll strategist Prashant Kishor joined JD(U). On Tuesday, Nitish was admitted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi for a routine medical check-up.


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