india

Updated: Mar 15, 2019 22:20 IST

Jharkhand’s former chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Hemant Soren today met Communist Party of India leader D Raja, saying that all opposition parties should be included in this “momentum” fight.

Soren wrote on Twitter that he had a “fruitful discussion” with Raja about the contours of the grand alliance against the BJP in Jharkhand. “We strongly feel that all opposition parties should be included in this momentum fight,” he tweeted after the meeting.

“Despite limited room, Hemant has suggested including the CPI in the opposition alliance. If this proposal is agreed upon by other allies, the CPI may get one seat to contest,” a JMM leader said. If it joins the opposition alliance, the CPI could get the Hazaribag Lok Sabha seat, currently held by union minister Jayant Sinha. In return, it will have to let go of the Koderma Lok Sabha seat that it is demanding.

Jharkhand has a total of 14 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP won 12 in the last election.

Soren is in Delhi to finalise the seat sharing talks with the Congress leadership, and is expected to meet Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday. “A formal announcement is expected tomorrow,” the JMM leader said.

The seat sharing between the Congress, the JMM, the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) of Lalu Prasad and the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM) of former chief minister Babulal Marandi is stuck due to disagreement between the allies over two seats.

The JVM has staked claim over Godda, where the Congress stood second in the last parliamentary election.

The Congress has staked claim on Chaibasa, where it stood third in the 2014 election, but the JMM wants to field its own candidate because it performed better than the Congress in the 2014 assembly elections. The JMM had an alliance with the Congress for parliamentary election, and it did not field a candidate in Chaibasa in the previous Lok Sabha election. The two parties had fought the assembly election separately and the JMM had won 5 of the 6 assembly constituencies under the Chaibasa Lok Sabha seat.