Railway minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Laloo Prasad Yadav today continued to threaten the Congress on both Jharkhand and Bihar. ‘‘It’s always Laloo versus all,’’ he said, cloistered in his Tughlaq Road house, surrounded by MPs armed with pie-charts and graphs on Jharkhand. ‘‘We don’t need them (Congress) in Bihar. They have become so arrogant that when they announced the seats.they said other parties.they didn’t even name us,’’ he said, sitting in the lawn of his residence. ‘‘But we will not harm the government at the Centre,’’ he added. Laloo said that the CPI, CPM and RJD would decide on seat-sharing and leave the Congress to fight seats where it had sitting MLAs, in Jharkhand and in Bihar. He said the norms applied in Maharastra should be adopted in Bihar and Jharkhand as well, with first and second winners getting the seats. The pie-charts and graphs were used to show that the RJD was equal to the Congress in the last Assembly polls in Jharkhand. ‘‘We got 11 per cent of the vote share in the last Assembly elections, so did the Congress,’’ said Union minister Prem Gupta, showing a chart. The RJD has 9 sitting MLAs, while four sitting JD(U) MLAs have joined the RJD. And in 11 seats, the RJD came second, while the CPI has three sitting MLAs. The RJD fought 35 seats, while the Congress fought all and JMM contested 74 seats. ‘‘These people didn’t even ask. And if they say that they talked to us on Jharkhand at any point of time, they are liars,’’ said Laloo. He added that the RJD and Left parties, which were left out of the Jharkhand talks, would go united to protest. Laloo, who has been offering 30 seats to the Congress till now, today said there would be no compromise in seat-sharing in Bihar. So far, six rounds of talks have taken place between the Congress, led by Arjun Singh, and the RJD, with little gains being made on both sides. Laloo attended one round, while the other rounds have been left to Raguvansh Prasad Singh. ‘‘Do they think that we will spread out a carpet of flowers in Bihar? I will tell my voters also that the people within the Congress are destroying the UPA,’’ he said. But Laloo was quick to say that Congress president Sonia Gandhi was being misled, in a reference to Arjun Singh and M.L. Fotedar. Laloo today met CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan and CPM leader Sitaram Yechury and also asked NCP chief Sharad Pawar to come to Delhi tomorrow, he said.
