Taking exception to the presence of the Congress, the Samajwadi party has decided to skip the first rally of the RJD—JD (U) led Maha gathbandhan or grand alliance at Patna on Sunday. The alliance which also includes the Congress and Sharad Pawar led Nationalist Congress Party, has invited the Congress President Sonia Gandhi and she is most likely to attend the rally.
The SP maintaining an ambivalent stand about its association with the lalu Yadav led RJD and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) led grand alliance for the forthcoming Bihar assembly elections to take on the BJP led National democratic alliance, said it’s not possible for the party to share the public platform with the Congress and it will stay away from the rally on Sunday.
“Never in history we have shared the dais with the Congress so there is no question of the Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) attending the Patna rally on Sunday’’, said the SP’s national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP.
Nanda denied that Mulayam Singh skipping the Patna rally had anything to do with the recent meeting of Netaji with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. RsRsThe Prime Minister Modi and Netaji, both are MPs from UP, so the two leaders can meet anytime and no political motives should be attributed to such meetings.
“I feel our alliance with lalu Yadav’s party and JD (U) will continue but we are opposed to the presence of the Congress. We are not against the alliance but against the Congress. Right from the days of Dr Ram Manohar lohia, we have opposed the Congress and we are the oldest anti Congress party so how can we share the dais with the Congress’’, said Kiranmoy Nanda, the national general secretary of the SP and Rajya Sabha MP.
Asked whether the SP was miffed over few seats given to the party by the senior alliance partners Nanda said: “We never made any demand for any number of seats as we are not a big party in Bihar. lalu Yadav on Saturday announced to give five seats to our party of which two are from the quota of the RJD. Both laluji and Nitish Kumar are socialist and for us they are like our family members, we wanted the merger of all the parties—SP, RJD, JD (U) JD(S), INlD but it could not materalise due to technical reasons and the Election commission’’.
Ram Chandra Yadav, the Bihar state president of the SP said: “Our alliance was well placed to take on the BJP led NDA but the two parties Congress and the NCP dropped on us as bolt from the blue and they were also included into the grand alliance without taking our party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav into confidence’’. The Bihar SP leader said the RJD and the JD (U) shared the total 243 seats among themselves without consulting us. RsRsThe state executive of the Bihar SP has authorized the party national president Mulayam Singh Yadav to take a final decision whether to contest 100 seats or all the 243 seats or to form a third front in Bihar’’, said Ram Chandra Yadav.
The SP during its last national executive meeting here in October 2014 had dropped clear hints of coming together of all the splinter groups of the janata Parivaar. later in November last year a meeting of all the parties including Rashtriya JanataDal, Janata Dal (United) HD Devegowda’s party Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka and Indian National lok Dal (INlD) of Om Prakash Chautala of Haryana was held in Delhi. All the parties decide to merge to form one entity and also work closely in both the houses of the parliament.
The idea however got stuck on the issue of the election symbol of the proposed new political party. The SP, RJD and JD (U) were reluctant to part with their respective symbols as the Elections commission would have frozen all the symbols. The RJD and JD (U) were reluctant to take this risk as Bihar assembly elections were approaching and elections in UP are due in February 2017. All these parties were constituents of the Janata Dal set up in 1988 to defeat the Congress. Earlier in 1977 also the same constituents were part of the Janata Party set up in the wake of lifting of the emergency.Janata Party also included the Sangh parivar affiliate Bhartiya Jan Sangh, which later reincarnated itself as the Bahrtiya Janarta Party in April 1980.