Bihar's Grand Alliance in conflict as elections close in, intra-alliance clash in 8 seats

Patna: The Grand Alliance in Bihar has failed to reach a consensus even as the first round of nominations closes. This has led to direct contests between 8 candidates within the alliance, exposing the conflict within the state's opposition bloc.

The nomination process for the first phase of the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections concluded on Friday. Yet, the bloc, comprising RJD, Congress, CPI, CPI-ML, CPM, and VIP, has not formally announced its seat-sharing arrangement.

Despite the nomination deadline passing, there is still no clarity on how many seats each constituent party will contest.

So far, the Congress has released a list of 48 candidates, while the CPI(ML) has announced 18 candidates. But due to the lack of coordination, the allies are competing against one another in the first phase of the election.

In at least eight constituencies, Grand Alliance partners have fielded rival candidates. The RJD has given a ticket to Shivani Shukla, daughter of Munna Shukla, from Lalganj. However, an intra-alliance clash is set up as Congress has also fielded Aditya Kumar Raja from the same seat.

Similarly, RJD's Ajay Kushwaha clashes with Congress's Sanjeev Kumar in Vaishali and Arun Shah from RJD is contesting against VIP's Sakaldev Bind in Tarapur. A similar pattern is followed in Bachhwara, where CPI's Awadhesh Rai is competing against Congress's Garib Das and Gaura Bauram, where RJD's Afzal Ali is contesting against VIP's Santosh Sahani. 

In Rajapakad and Rosera, CPI candidates Mohit Paswan and Laxman Paswan take on Congress's Pratima Das and B.K. Ravi respectively. There is one more seat where the Grand Alliance constituent partners are contesting against each other. This raises the tally of internally conflicting constituencies to 8.

The infighting signals a crisis within the bloc as elections close in, potentially weakening their prospects. This comes after 10 days of intense discussions that have taken place from Patna to Delhi over the seat-sharing formula. 

While Rahul Gandhi and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge reportedly tried to appease unhappy leaders, it didn't yield the desired outcome. As the deadline approached, candidates rushed to file nominations at the last minute.

(With IANS inputs)