Patna: There is now a "third front" in Bihar, where the "Grand Alliance" led by chief minister Nitish Kumar takes on the BJP's coalition of four parties in assembly elections beginning mid-October.
Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party has said it will contest the elections in partnership with Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party or NCP and a regional party, the Samajwadi Janata Dal-Democratic.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had exited Nitish Kumar's alliance two weeks ago, upset that his party was assigned only five of Bihar's 243 seats to contest.
Days before that, the NCP had walked out rejecting the three seats it was given under the seat-sharing formula devised by the alliance, which includes, apart from Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, the RJD led by Lalu Yadav and the Congress.
Neither the Samajwadi Party nor the NCP have been players of much significance in Bihar politics. Neither party won a single seat in the last assembly elections in 2010. In the national election last year, the NCP had won one parliament seat, the Samajwadi Party none.
But the new alliance has the potential to queer the pitch for the Nitish-Lalu-Congress combine by splitting the Muslim and Yadav vote in some seats.
Samajwadi Party leader Ramgopal Yadav today announced the "third front" - a term used often to describe a non-Congress, non-BJP political grouping at the national level - making it clear that it would train its guns on the Nitish Kumar-led alliance.
After the BJP and its regional allies swept the national election in Bihar last year, winning 32 of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats, parties like the JD(U), RJD and the Samajwadi Party had put aside years of rivalry and mistrust to come together to block the party from another win in the assembly elections.
The BJP is projecting no one as its candidate for chief minister to take on Nitish Kumar, who is seeking a third term. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading his party's campaign and has drawn huge crowds at the four rallies he has addressed.
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