Congress to field candidates against Lalu, Paswan

With the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Lok Janshakti Party combine contesting all the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, the Congress on Tuesday announced that it would field its nominees against RJD chief Lalu Prasad and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan.

"The RJD and the LJP have made Congress their enemy number one in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar," state Pradesh Congress Committee chief Anil Kumar Sharma said. He alleged that the fielding of candidates by the two parties "smacked of a conspiracy to defeat the party's nominees and give advantage to the National Democratic Alliance."

The Congress will field candidates against Lalu in Pataliputra constituency and against Paswan in Hajipur, Sharma said. However, the party failed to field its candidate against Lalu in Saran, the filing of nomination for which ended on Monday.

Charging the RJD-LJP combine with playing 'politics of opportunism', Sharma said Lalu has put up his party's state president Abdul Bari Siddiqui against Union Minister of State for Home and Congress candidate Shakeel Ahmed in Madhubani. "It is meaningless to point out that it is bound to help Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Hukumdeo Narain Yadav in the parliamentary constituency," he said.

Sharma alleged that Lalu has fielded Lalan Paswan 'merely to defeat' Union Minister Meira Kumar in Sasaram and Shakeel Ahmed Khan in Aurangabad against sitting Congress Member of Parliament Nikhil Kumar. The Congress has so far fielded 30 candidates out of the total 40 constituencies in the state.

While it has left Katihar seat for Nationalist Congress Party nominee Tariq Anwar, it is yet to announce its candidates for the remaining seats. "The candidature on the seats will be decided by the central election committee of the All India Congress Committee very soon," Sharma said.