The Janata Parivar constituents’ merger has hit the Jitan Ram Manjhi roadblock. A day after keeping away from a crucial meeting, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday met SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and raised objections to RJD chief lalu Prasad’s idea of roping-in Manjhi in the alliance, an issue that threatens to derail the grouping.
Sources said the JD(U) leader, who was joined by party president Sharad Yadav, made it clear that lalu’s statement did no good to the prospects of their alliance for the Assembly elections due in September-October this year. He suggested that both parties form a committee to thrash out an agreement over seat-sharing in Bihar.
Nitish had on Friday skipped the meeting “due to a minor eye surgery”. Sharad, lalu and Mulayam attended the meeting where the RJD chief formally broached the idea of bringing Manjhi onboard. This led to Sharad leaving the meeting midway.
In Bihar, a pall of uncertainty mixed with sense of anguish has descended on the ruling JD(U) circles here over the deadlock over the merger of Janata Parivar parties or alliance with RJD prior to the crucial Bihar Assembly election.
JD(U) leaders, who are still hoping to iron out the differences in the larger interest of the unity of secular forces, blame RJD supremo lalu and Mulayam for putting up the speed breakers.
As a matter of fact it was Nitish who had been pushing hard for the merger for the past six months. He got alarmed early this month with statements like one issued by SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav who expressed that merger would not be possible before Bihar Assembly polls owing to technical resons and lalu too echoing similar views.
Now it is official that Mulayam too subscribed to the views of his brother and his foe-turned-Samdhi. “Mulayam’s family is not very keen on merger fearing to lose party’s existence and stature and lalu does not want to accept Nitish as CM face in polls. Even alliance can hardly take shape, let alone the merger, under the prevailing situation,” said a senior minister. “This way we are only paving way for the BJP to grab power in Bihar,” he added.
The deadlock comes at a time when a private news channel came out with a survey which projected that JD(U)-RJD and Congress alliance would be in a position to stall the BJP led NDA in Bihar and in case there is no such alliance BJP would come to power. The survey also suggested that Nitish is the preference of 52% people as compared to only 17% for BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi.
The JD(U) leaders are very guarded in their reaction and do not want to say anything while waiting for their leader Nitish to express his views publicly.