PATNA, Oct. 18 -- In a twist to the already tense Bihar assembly elections, the INDIA bloc's seat-sharing pact has unravelled a series of 'friendly' contests, pitting alliance partners against each other on at least four crucial seats. The discord, simmering for weeks, boiled over as the deadline for filing nominations in the first phase expired Friday evening, leaving the Mahagathbandhan - comprising the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) and Left parties - in disarray just days before polling kicks off. The peculiar standoff highlights deep fissures within the Opposition grand alliance, with constituents like the RJD and Left outfits - CPI(ML), CPI and CPI(M) - defiantly fielding candidates on seats ostensibly allocated to the Congress under the hard-fought agreement. Despite Congress securing several contentious constituencies such as Vaishali, Jale, Lalganj and Bachhwara from its allies, in a notable concession, it relinquished its sitting seat of Maharajganj to the RJD, where businessman Vishal Jaiswal has been nominated to replace the 2020 victor Vijay Shankar Dubey, who won as the Mahagathbandhan's Congress candidate. Dubey, displaying characteristic loyalty, has remained silent and compliant with the party high command's decision. However, the same cannot be said for aspirants from other coalition partners, who refused to back down and submitted their nomination papers on seats earmarked for Congress. With the nomination window now closed, these multi-cornered battles - euphemistically termed 'friendly fights' - are all but locked in, threatening to splinter votes and hand an unintended advantage to the ruling NDA. The flashpoints are starkly evident across the state. In Bachhwara (Begusarai), Congress nominee Shiv Prakash Garib Das, who also serves as president of the Bihar Pradesh Youth Congress (BPYC), is poised for a direct clash with CPI's Awadhesh Roy. Roy, undeterred by the alliance pact, filed his papers before Congress instructed Garib Das to enter the fray, underscoring the rushed and reactive nature of the seat-sharing exercise. A similar drama unfolds in Raja Pakar, where sitting Congress MLA Pratima Das must now contend with CPI(M) leader Mohit Paswan, who lodged his nomination on the final day of filing. Paswan's last-minute move has turned what was meant to be a unified opposition push into an intra-alliance skirmish, with both candidates drawing from overlapping voter bases in the reserved constituency. Vaishali, another battleground, sees RJD's Abhay Kushwaha squaring off against Congress's Sanjeev Singh, as Kushwaha presses his claim despite the seat's allocation to the grand old party. Adjacent Lalganj is equally fractious, with Congress's Aditya Raj facing off against RJD's Shivani Shukla - the daughter of don-turned-politician Munna Shukla - in a contest laced with familial political legacy and alliance acrimony. The confusion extends beyond these four seats. In Goura Bouram, yet another layer of intrigue emerged when Afzal Ali Khan filed his nomination sporting the RJD's lantern symbol, proclaiming himself a steadfast loyalist to party supremo Lalu Prasad and his son Tejashwi Yadav. Khan's bold entry comes hot on the heels of the seat being allotted to the VIP, where party chief Mukesh Sahni's brother, Santosh Sahni, had already submitted papers. Khan's defiant act, framed as an act of "true soldiership," has injected further uncertainty into the alliance's cohesion. Congress insiders, speaking off the record, expressed frustration over the breakdowns, pointing to protracted negotiations that failed to iron out local-level ambitions. "We've given ground on Maharajganj to keep the peace, but this reciprocity has gone wrong," one leader remarked. RJD sources, meanwhile, dismissed the rifts as "minor teething issues," insisting that high command interventions could still avert full-blown rebellions before the polls. "The defiant candidates will pull out by the last date of withdrawal, which is October 20," added a senior RJD leader....