JD(U) is the third non-Congress party of INDIA alliance to run candidates, according to MP polls

Bihar’s government After discussions to form an alliance with the Congress fell through, the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), a significant member of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), has issued the initial list of five candidates for the Madhya Pradesh elections on November 17.

After the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Aam Aadmi Party, JD(U) is the third non-Congress party of the INDIA alliance to declare their candidates for the elections. Over a dozen of the 230 seats were anticipated to be in contention.

They were unable to come to an agreement, according to JD(U) general secretary Afaque Ahmed Khan, who revealed the party’s first list on Tuesday. The JD(U) would run for 10 to 12 seats. Soon, the second list would be made public.

After breaking out his alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2022, the JD(U), whose leader Nitish Kumar led the charge for the creation of the INDIA bloc, ran unsuccessfully in the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh in 2003, 2008, and 2013.

While the party’s leader, Akhilesh Yadav, last week expressed a desire to speak with the Congress after criticizing its leader for abandoning him, the SP has filed 45 candidates for the Madhya Pradesh elections. A few days after requesting the Congress to explain if the alliance also applied at the state level, Yadav said earlier this week that the INDIA bloc only existed at the national level.

He said that SP members would not have gone to Congress with a list for seat sharing if they had known that there would be no INDIA alliance at the state level. In the 2024 general elections, Yadav said that his party will run candidates for all 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.

The SP has sought to grow outside Uttar Pradesh in order to become a national party. It has been a regional party since its founding in 1992. When it won seven of the 161 seats it ran for in Madhya Pradesh in 2003, the SP saw its greatest victory outside of Uttar Pradesh.

It ran for 52 seats in the 2018 assembly elections, winning one. Since then, the lone legislator has joined the BJP, which is in power.

Constituents in INDIA decided to fight the 2024 elections jointly “as far as possible” in September. They also said that seat-sharing agreements in states would be started right now and completed as soon as possible in a “collaborative spirit of give-and-take.”

Elections will be held in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram between November 7 and 30, with results being announced on December 3. Prior to the elections in 2024, this will be the final significant election. The assembly elections are also the first since the INDIA bloc, a coalition of 26 opposition parties, was created in July to compete against the BJP in these elections.

Months before the 2019 general elections, the Congress ousted the BJP from power in the Hindi-speaking heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. However, five months later, the BJP returned to power with a larger majority at the Center, and it was only able to win three of the 65 Lok Sabha seats in the three states.