Bihar Assembly Elections 2025 | Allies must 'share burden', we can't be dumping yard for unwinnable seats: Congress

New Delhi: With the Bihar Assembly elections round the corner, the Congress has made it clear to its 'Maha Gadbandhan' allies that it is not averse to settle for a lesser number of seats but is unwilling to be a dumping yard of seats that are not winnable.

As the party plans to leverage on Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, the Congress acknowledged that new parties are joining the RJD-led ‘Maha Gadbandhan’ (Grand Alliance) and they cannot be rigid on the seats that they fought five years ago.

All existing partners together will have to share the burden while ensuring an equitable distribution of seats, Congress said. However, it has a warning to alliance partners that it should not be made to take a large proportion of seats that are not winnable for the coalition.

“All parties will have to give up some seats. There are winnable and non-winnable seats. One should not get only seats that cannot be won. One should also get all winning seats also. There has to be a mix,” Congress’ Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru said on Wednesday.

“We want a balance in seat sharing. We are going ahead positively,” he said.

Allavaru’s assertion comes amid Congress’ 2020 performance – winning just 19 out of 70 contested – when a section in the party had claimed that the party was dumped with seats that the alliance partners have never won for several decades.

The demand within the party is that it should ask for winnable seats rather than focussing on the number of seats. Sources said the indications are that the Congress will have to settle for 57-60 seats, even as state party leaders are looking at various permutations and combinations.

However, Allavaru’s formula of reducing seats of existing partners to accommodate new members may not go down well with the CPI(ML)L, which has demanded 40 seats. The Left party had won 19 out of 22 seats it won last time.

At an informal meeting of Bihar Screening Committee, Allavaru said the timeline for deliberations have been finalised. Block and District Committees should propose names by this weekend while a meeting of the state Election Committee will be held in Patna on September 16. From September 19, the Screening Committee will start deliberations officially, he said.

Sources said at a meeting of Bihar leaders with central leadership on Tuesday, the state leaders were told to take forward the traction the party got after the ‘yatra’. They were asked not to sit on the “laurels” of the yatra but link the campaign around ‘vote chori’ with other people’s issues.

Concluding the ‘yatra’ in Patna on September 1, Rahul had said ‘vote chori’ would steal rights, reservations, jobs, education, democracy and the future of youth.

Indicating that this formulation would be central to the party’s campaign, Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Ram, “the ‘vote chori’ is linked to denying ration, pension, MNREGA payment and others,” Ram said.

Allavaru said, “Vote theft is a people’s issue and a government formed by stealing votes will not solve people’s issues. They will not be bothered about price rise, crime, paper leak, rising health costs etc. At any cost, there is a need to remove the Bihar government.”