Lok Janshakti Party national general secretary Shahnawaz Ahmad Kaifi on Tuesday said that pary chief Chirag Paswan should be the chief ministerial candidate in the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections. Speaking to news agency ANI, Ahmad Kaifi said, "Chirag Paswan is definitely the Chief Minister candidate of our party, there is no doubt about it. The leaders, workers in our party are of the same opinion."
On reports of confusion in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over seat-sharing in the state, he said that the party should fight on 143 seats.
Earlier, Chirag Paswan has served an ultimatum to the BJP over seat sharing in the NDA coalition. Paswan reportedly met BJP president JP Nadda on Monday and demanded a decision on seat sharing soon, a report in NDTV said.
The LJP has also made it clear that if it doesn’t happen the party will field candidates on 143 out of 243 seats in Bihar.
"The party members also believe that we should fight on at least 143 seats in the elections. I too would urge the party to fight on these many seats," Kaifi added.
According to reports, the BJP has offered 22-25 seats to the LJP but Chirag Paswan has finalised 143 probable candidates in case it goes alone. In the past few months, Chirag has been making statements critical of Nitish Kumar and his governance track record in Bihar. He once said that the LJP was in NDA because of the BJP and it would decide on an alliance after talking to its central leadership in Delhi.
Earlier, BJP had clarified that the NDA would go in the elections under the leadership of incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Bihar has 243 Assembly seats and elections in the state are due and expected in October-November as the tenure of the current Assembly will end by last November this year. The Election Commission has not yet taken a final call on poll dates in Bihar.
