RLSP national working president Nagmani, upset with the progress of seat-sharing in the NDA, declared on Saturday that the BJP was forcing it to leave them and join the Grand Alliance.

Nagmani pointed out that the BJP was insulting the RLSP by spreading rumours in the media of offering it just two seats.

Nagmani said that Kushwaha has a greater vote share than Nitish Kumar’s Kurmi votebank and if the JDU get 17 seats, then the RLSP deserves 20 seats.

This is for the first time that the RLSP leader has come out in the media to slam the BJP openly over the seat-sharing issue.

“Nitish Kumar has just 1.5 or 2 per cent votes of Kurmis, whereas we have 10 per cent solid vote of the Kushwahas and he knows very well that if the RLSP remains there, he can never become chief minister,” said Nagmani, while speaking to The Telegraph over phone from Jehanabad.

“Without the RLSP, nobody can form the government in Bihar in the next Assembly elections. It is up to the BJP

to decide which party it wants to go ahead with, the JDU or the RLSP. The way the JDU and the BJP are playing games, it seems they want the RSLP out of the NDA,” Nagmani further said.

Ever since JDU president Nitish Kumar had a meeting with BJP national president Amit Shah in New Delhi, the buzz of the RLSP being upset has gained strength.

The RLSP is not able to digest how Nitish could get more seats going by the fact that the RLSP has more MPs and they had won all three Lok Sabha seats in the last general election.

RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha File picture

The RLSP accused the BJP of wanting the RLSP to quit the NDA so that they could easily distribute the seats among themselves.

“The way the BJP is behaving, it seems they want us to leave the NDA and every passing day, they are pushing us to join the Grand Alliance. I must tell you that we are being insulted to leave the NDA and the day we leave (the NDA), they will suffer such a heart attack that they cannot even go to hospital and will die on the spot. By spreading canards in the media that the RLSP will get just two seats, it’s like teasing the Kushwaha community, which anytime has a bigger votebank than the JDU’s,” Nagmani said.

He also trained his guns at Amit Shah, saying that the RLSP was not dying to speak to him and he is not God for them and that the RLSP has its own leader and votebank.

RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha was at Patna airport to board a flight to Delhi when the media asked him about the seat-sharing issue. He replied in a low voice that such an important issued was not discussed with the media.

Sources in the RLSP said Nitish’s emissary, Prashant Kishor, had recently met Kushwaha in Delhi and had a closed-door meeting with him to convince and pressurise the BJP for more seats in which the LJP and the JDU will also support him.

“In the meeting, Kishor floated a suggestion that the RLSP would get what they had got earlier but the party should keep on pressuring the BJP for more seats in which the LJP and the JDU will support them,” said a senior RLSP leader, requesting anonymity.

“With this formula, the JDU, the LJP and the RLSP can come together and jointly pressurise the BJP for their desired number of seats.

The LJP personally does not want to let go of the RLSP because there are more than 2 lakh Kushwaha voters in parliamentary constituencies of

the LJP, like Hajipur and Jamui, which can have an adverse impact on the LJP too, should the RLSP leave,” added the leader.