Miffed with the meagre number of seats allotted to them, the Samajwadi Party has opted out of the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Yadav-Congress 'grand alliance' in Bihar and has decided to contest the Bihar elections independently.
"SP parliamentary board has decided to contest Bihar elections independently," party leader Ram Gopal Yadav told reporters in Lucknow. According to the Times of India, the SP leaders were feeling 'cheated' after being given just five of the 243 seats in the alliance.
The Samajwadi Party has no state legislators or parliamentarians from Bihar, so the break-up's impact--according to NDTV-- deals a psychological blow to the apparent unity of parties that have grouped against the BJP.
On August, the Nationalist Congress Party had also pulled out of the combine citing too few seats.
The campaigning in the Bihar polls has been predictably vitriolic with the BJP and the opposition parties accusing each other of the lack of development.
The BJP is yet to announce a chief ministerial candidate and--like in previous state elections over the last year--have chosen to rely on Narendra Modi's gravitas and speeches, in the ongoing election campaign.
The dates for the Bihar election will be announced shortly.
Nitish Kumar, who has already served back-to-back terms as Chief Minister, is the candidate of the non-BJP alliance.
Contact HuffPost India