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Laloo announces deal with Congress

Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav today announced a formal electoral alliance with the Congress and the Left parties in Bihar for the Lok Sabha election.

The state's ruling party will contest 34 of the 54 seats. In the electoral understanding reached at the national level, the Congress has got 14 seats in Bihar.

The three Left parties -- the Communist Party of India, the CPI (Marxist) and the Marxist Co-ordination Committee -- received three, two and one seats, respectively, in the alliance, which was formally announced today after several days of discussion.

The RJD president told reporters that he had increased the quota for the Congress to 14 from 13 following a request from party chief Sonia Gandhi.

He said the electoral alliance was complete and hoped there would be no friendly contests between the partners.

To a query on the reported resentment among Congressmen on the number of seats allotted to the party, he said, "I had a talk with senior Congress leaders and only after that I had announced the numbers."

He termed the National Democratic Alliance a "vagabond of Ramlila Mandali". The Bharatiya Janata Party and its team would be "wiped out of power" which they had "misused for their personal benefit", he added.

While no Congress and CPI leaders were present at the press conference, two senior CPI-M leaders attended it.

The Congress was demanding not less than 20 seats while the CPI was pressing for eight.

UNI

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