The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is on track and its constituents will contest all 243 seats in the alliance. The seat distribution has not been finalised but the chief minister will be the incumbent CM—JD-U’s Nitish Kumar, sources confirmed.
State leaders have held several rounds of meetings and some more are in the pipeline before the action shifts to Delhi for finalising the plan. Nitish Kumar will continue to be the face of the bloc, they said, also trashing speculations around his health and conduct in the public.
This time Nitish Kumar also has the support of Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president and Union minister Chirag Paswan who opposed Nitish Kumar vehemently in the last Assembly elections.
Chirag’s opposition is said to be a key reason for JD-U losing seats in the last Assembly elections. This time, however, he has already voiced support, telling mediapersons recently that “there is no vacancy for the post of CM in Bihar and development work will continue under Nitish Kumar’s leadership.”
In the 2024 Parliament elections, BJP contested 17 of the total 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, JD-U 16, LJP five, and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha one seat each. The seat distribution for Assembly elections is expected to be around the same lines, give or take a couple of seats, according to local reports
In that case, JD-U is expected to contest around 102–103 seats and BJP around 101–102 seats with the remaining distributed among the three smaller allies—LJP, HAM and RLM.
