Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar said on Saturday that he wanted the seat-distribution agreement between the INDIA partners for the Lok Sabha polls finalised soon and that more parties were slated to join the new coalition, adding that this had unnerved the BJP.

Nitish will reach Mumbai on August 31 to attend the third meeting of INDIA to follow up on the decisions taken at the Bangalore meeting in July. The main meeting will be held on September 1.

“I am going there. More parties will join the alliance there. All of us will meet there, and I want the distribution of seats to be finalised soon — who or which parties will contest from where,” Nitish told reporters while inspecting the progress of infrastructure projects in Patna.

The JDU leader has been at the forefront of the efforts to unite the Opposition to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections ever since he left the NDA in August 2022 to form a Grand Alliance government in Bihar. Nitish had organised the first meeting of the Opposition parties in Patna in June this year.

“I do not pay attention to their (the BJP’s) attacks on me. These are useless things. They know that I have been uniting so many people, which will lead to their defeat. This could be the reason behind them speaking against me,” Nitish said.

Asserting that he did not want anything for himself, Nitish iterated that his only wish was to unite the Opposition parties.

Privatisation poser

Bihar deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav slammed the BJP government at the Centre for “selling public sector enterprises, resources and national properties to big industrialists in the garb of so-called reforms”.

He said it was against the interests of the country and farmers.

Tejashwi said terminating government jobs through privatisation was a long-drawn project of the Modi government to end reservation for people belonging to the deprived sections in public sector employment.