PATNA, FEBRUARY 27: RJD president Laloo Prasad Yadav today said his party would stake claim to form the government in Bihar tomorrow even as CPI said it would not support either NDA or RJD.Talking to reporters here, Yadav said the newly-elected MLAs of his party would meet this evening to elect their leader before the RJD would approach the governor V C Pande for forming the government.He said since RJD had emerged as the single largest party, the Governor would be left with no other choice but to call it for ministry formation.On the reported move to elect Union Agriculture Minister Nitish Kumar as the leader of NDA in Bihar, the RJD president said NDA wanted "to shunt Nitish by engaging him in Bihar politics."Yadav claimed that his party enjoyed support of more than 50 MLAs of like-minded secular parties and the Independents and "we will easily prove our majority in the Lower House."Earlier, RJD National spokesman, Shivanand Tiwari urged the Janata Dal-U and Samata allies of NDA, to part company with the BJP and reunite with RJD to strengthen the cause of social justice and secularism in Bihar."We want leaders of JD-U, Samata and RJD born out of socialist movement to sink their differences and sit together to explore the possibilities of unification," he said.Tiwari said the results of the Bihar assembly poll reflected that the people of Bihar had "outrightly" rejected the "communal" BJP "but the Samata and JD-U reaped rich electoral harvests due to the secular credentials they earlier had."He said it had become necessary that the social-justice groups unite.The state committee of CPI, meanwhile, announced that it would neither support the NDA nor the RJD in government-formation.The party, which got six seats, in a press release said the mandate was against the RJD and NDA as well.The ruling RJD emerged as a single largest party in Bihar winning 123 seats, while the NDA secured 122. RJD's ally, CPI-M Got two seats. With such a fractured verdict, both the NDA and the ruling RJD have mounted hectic efforts to woo the 20 independents who hold the key to government formation.Some of them like alleged underworld dons Surajbhan Singh and Vijay Shukla alias Munna Shukla have won the poll with the tacit support of Samata Party.While Singh, considered close to Union Minister Nitish Kumar got elected from Mokama by huge margin after Samata withdrew its nomineee. Samata candidate Kiran Shukla too withdrew from the fray in support of Vijay, another ganglord in Lalganj constituency.An Independent MLA from Govindganj Rajan Tiwary, considered a protege of Surajbhan, may throw his lot with the NDA.The newly-elected MLA from Minapur Dinesh Sarkar is a Bihar Peoples' Party man who contested as independent and the NDA is also banking on his support.Likewise, the RJD is looking for support from rebel BJP leader Aditya Singh who won the Hisua seat and Dadan Singh, the Independent from Dumraon.Though the Independents have not yet formally announced their decision either collectively or individually it is felt that most of them have the tendency to throw their lot with the party which is invited to form the ministry.The number of Independents in the 324-member House stands effectively reduced to 19 as JD(U) leader Narendra Singh has won as Independent from Chakai and under a party's symbol in Jamui. Singh, in all likelihood would retain his status of JD(U) MLA.
