On Wednesday, a meeting was underway between the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a possible alliance ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The two former allies were working out the outline of a seat-sharing pact for the assembly elections and Lok Sabha polls, which are scheduled to be held in Odisha this summer.
BJD chief and Odisha chief minister, Naveen Patnaik held meetings with senior party leaders in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha.
Meetings were also held in Delhi where the BJP discussed the seat-sharing both for the 147 assembly seats and the 21 Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP’s core group in Odisha also met in the Capital to discuss candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, ahead of the central election committee’s meeting.
“The BJP wants to contest more seats than the BJD. In the last election the party won eight of the 21 seats and this time it is keen to contest more than 15 if the two parties announce an alliance’, said a party functionary, requesting anonymity.
In 2019, the BJD won 112 assembly seats to form the government in the state, while the BJP won 23, which was 13 more than the tally in 2014. In the Lok Sabha, the BJD won 12 seats, the BJP eight, and the Congress one.
BJP MP and former Union tribal affairs minister Jual Oram said, ‘There was discussion on alliance but nothing is final now. The top leaders of the party will decide on it. But we have told that we will fight alone and we gave our opinion, but whatever the central leaders of the party decide, we will abide by it. Several issues on how to fight elections were discussed at the crucial meeting’.
Comments