Sharp differences cropped up among National Democratic Alliance partners on Thursday on seat-sharing for the Bihar Assembly polls with Janata Dal (United) taking strong exception to Bharatiya Janata Party's objections over allocation of seats to former Lok Janshakti Party memebers of legislative assembly and some independents who had joined JD(U).
Charging its saffron ally with breaking its promise, senior JD(U) leader, Prabhunath Singh, told reporters that further talks on seat-sharing would be held only after BJP agreed to leave those seats in favour of JD(U).
"There should have been no dispute over those seats and these should have been treated as our sitting seats," he said, adding that till the matter was resolved, there was no use holding further talks with the BJP.
After the last assembly elections, 21 LJP MLAs and some independents had come out in support of NDA's chief ministerial candidate, Nitish Kumar, and it was agreed at that time that all of them would be re-nominated either as JD(U) or BJP candidates.
Singh said of the 21 LJP MLAs, 19 had joined JD(U) and had thus become 'our sitting MLAs'. Besides, he pointed out, there are some independents.
Singh said during seat-sharing talks with BJP, those constituencies were also discussed where LJP and the independents, who pledged their support to NDA, had won.
"This way, BJP has broken its promise," he said. Asked how many seats were disputed, he said the point was not the number but about keeping up one's word.
