Written by Asad RehmanNew Delhi | Updated: October 10, 2025 08:30 AM IST 5 min readElection officials attend a training session ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections, in Patna, Thursday, October 9, 2025. (PTI Photo)Despite multiple marathon meetings in the past few days, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress have been unable to strike a seat-sharing deal for next month’s Bihar Assembly elections due to disagreements over five seats.The five constituencies, according to highly placed sources, are Baisi (Purnea), Bahadurganj (Kishanganj), Raniganj (Araria), Kahalgaon (Bhagalpur), and Saharsa. In 2020, the RJD contested Raniganj, Saharsa, and Baisi, while Kahalgaon and Bahadurganj went to the Congress. Neither of the two parties won these seats.Sources said that while the RJD wants the Congress to give up Kahalgaon and Bahadurganj, the Congress wants Raniganj, Saharsa, and Baisi in return. “The negotiations have gone on for hours at a time, but there are five seats where the RJD and Congress are still struggling to reach a consensus. No party wants to concede even a single seat at this point as the allies have increased and the number of seats for every party will have to decrease,” said a source who is part of the parleys between the two sides.A leader with knowledge of the negotiations said the RJD had already promised the Kahalgaon ticket to a Yadav candidate without consulting the Congress, irking the grand old party. On Wednesday, RJD leader and state Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav started his Assembly election campaign from Kahalgaon, further upsetting the Congress. At the rally, Tejashwi was accompanied by Jharkhand minister Sanjay Yadav’s son Rajnish Yadav, who will likely be the RJD’s candidate if it manages to bag the constituency.The BJP’s Pawan Kumar Yadav won Kahalgaon in 2020, defeating Congress candidate Shubhanand Mukesh by 42,893 votes. Raniganj was a close contest, with the JD(U)’s Achmit Rishidev defeating RJD nominee Avinash Mangalam by 2,304 votes. Saharsa was won by the BJP’s Alok Ranjan Jha, who defeated RJD candidate Lovely Anand by 19,679 votes. AIMIM’s Syed Ruknuddin Ahmad bagged Baisi, winning it by 16,373 votes over the BJP’s Vinod Kumar, while RJD candidate Abdus Subhan finished third. In 2022, Ahmad switched over to the RJD.Bahadurganj also went to the AIMIM in 2020, with MLA Mohammad Anzar Nayeemi defeating VIP’s Lakhan Lal Pandit by 45,215 votes. The Congress candidate, Md Tauseef Alam, finished third. Nayeemi switched over to the RJD two years later.Discord over CM questionThe RJD and the Congress have also been at odds with each other over projecting Tejashwi as the Opposition Mahagathbandhan alliance’s CM face. The Congress has cited its practice of not declaring a CM face as a reason, even as party insiders say their leaders fear that non-Yadav OBC votes will consolidate against the Opposition alliance if Tejashwi is named the CM candidate.Story continues below this ad“Everyone knows it is easy for the BJP to consolidate OBC votes if there is a CM candidate from the Yadav community. It happened for the Congress in Haryana, where, despite no official CM candidate, the BJP benefitted from an anti-Jat narrative. The same can happen if Tejashwi is the CM face,” said a senior state Congress leader, admitting that the RJD disagrees with this.The Tejashwi-led party’s counter is that since it is the largest constituent of the Grand Alliance, it will have the final say on who becomes CM if the Mahagathbandhan comes to power. “We will have the highest number of MLAs if the alliance wins, so there is no point in the discussion and we will stick to this stand. The Congress and other smaller parties may have Deputy CM faces,” said a senior RJD leader.The Congress’s central leaders have sidestepped questions about differences in the alliance’s top two parties on the CM question, saying it will be decided after the results are declared on November 14. LoP Rahul Gandhi had also dodged the question during the Voter Adhikar Yatra in the state in August.While the seat-sharing formula remains undecided, the Congress has finalised the names of 25 candidates. The decision was taken at the meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) in Delhi on Wednesday. Sources said these 25 seats include those of five sitting MLAs, including Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Shakeel Ahmad Khan, who represents Kadwa, and state president Rajesh Ram, the Kutumba MLA.Story continues below this adThe party’s Screening Committee for Bihar is scheduled to meet on Friday to discuss candidates for the rest of the seats. The CEC will then meet in a day or two to finalise the names.Asad Rehman is with the national bureau of The Indian Express and covers politics and policy focusing on religious minorities in India. A journalist for over eight years, Rehman moved to this role after covering Uttar Pradesh for five years for The Indian Express. During his time in Uttar Pradesh, he covered politics, crime, health, and human rights among other issues. He did extensive ground reports and covered the protests against the new citizenship law during which many were killed in the state. During the Covid pandemic, he did extensive ground reporting on the migration of workers from the metropolitan cities to villages in Uttar Pradesh. He has also covered some landmark litigations, including the Babri Masjid-Ram temple case and the ongoing Gyanvapi-Kashi Vishwanath temple dispute. Prior to that, he worked on The Indian Express national desk for three years where he was a copy editor. Rehman studied at La Martiniere, Lucknow and then went on to do a bachelor's degree in History from Ramjas College, Delhi University. He also has a Masters degree from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. ... Read More© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd