Patna,(BiharTimes): The seat-sharing talk appeared to be a victory of a sort for the Rashtriya Janata Dal because it managed to get the ticket from Madhubani parliament seat for its leader in the state Assembly, Abdul Bari Siddiqui.

Though there were dispute over a couple of more seats, but Madhubani was the bone of contention as the Congress party wanted to put up its general secretary and former Union minister of state for home affairs, Dr Shakeel Ahmed.

The RJD made it a prestige issue because Siddiqui lost the 2009 election to the BJP’s Hukum Deo Narayan Yadav by just 10,000 votes pushing Dr Ahmed to third position. Siddiqui not only remained loyal to the party, but played a very important role in checking the revolt in RJD from spreading. It is because of his initiative that nine out of 13 MLAs, who ‘revolted’ returned to the party fold.

The Congress announcement came a day after Dr Ahmed expressed his willingness to withdraw from the contest. Incidentally, Siddiqui and his son received injuries on Tuesday when his car met with an accident in Ranchi.

The RJD had to sacrifice one seat to the Congress for this deal. It agreed to give Muzaffarpur to the Congress.

RJD would contest 27 seats leaving 12 for Congress and one, Katihar, for Nationalist Congress Party.
Besides Muzaffarpur, Congress would contest from Sasaram, Aurangabad, Samastipur, Kishanganj, Purnea, Supaul, Valmikinagar, Hajipur, Patna Saheb, Nalanda and Gopalganj.

Apart from Dr Ahmed none of top leaders, such as state unit chief Ashok Choudhary and former Assembly speaker Sadanand Singh will be able to contest the parliamentary elections.