JD-U to seek special status for Bihar if it gets 15 seats

Patna, May 8 (IANS) Bihar's ruling JD-U on Wednesday said that the party will make a fresh pitch for its old demand of special category status to the state if it get 15 or more seats in the current Lok Sabha polls.

Senior Janata Dal-United leader K.C. Tyagi said that his party has not forgotten or ended its old demand.

"I appeal to people of Bihar to give us 15 or more seats in Lok Sabha polls. We will get special category status to the state this time," he said.

The JD-U, which is a part of the NDA, is contesting 17 of the state's 40 Lok Sabha seats. Ally Bharatiya Janata Party is also contesting 17 seats, while the remaining six have been allotted to the other ally, Lok Janshakti Party.

Noting that senior BJP leader Ram Madhav had rightly observed that the BJP may need support of allies to form the next government as it was likely to get lesser seats as compared to 2014, Tyagi said: "The JD-U will be happy if Narendra Modi will become PM again with the power of our numbers in the Parliament".

This is first time that a JD-U leader has raised the issue of special category status to Bihar during over-month-long campaign for the ongoing Lok Sabha polls. Chief Minsiter and party chief Nitish Kumar remained silent over the demand during the dozens of election meetings he had held, despite vociferously demanding special category status for his state.

However, the Narendra Modi government had repeatedly made it clear that it would not grant the state special category status, with three Union Ministers publicly ruling it out.