In a jungle

Those who know the Janata Parivar and its cantankerous leaders won't be surprised by the failure of the Janata Dal (United) and the Samata...

Those who know the Janata Parivar and its cantankerous leaders won’t be surprised by the failure of the Janata Dal (United) and the Samata Party to merge their identities. Their decision to contest the coming Assembly elections in Bihar on their own symbols denotes a setback for the anti-Laloo Yadav forces, who were banking upon them to give the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal a run for its money. After all they had fought last year’s Lok Sabha elections on a common symbol, ostensibly as a prelude to their merger.

What stood in the way of the merger is the leadership question. The leaders of both the JD(U) and the Samata Party were not prepared to make any compromise for fear that the president of the united party will have controlling influence on the selection of candidates. It is for this reason that Sharad Yadav and company found a threat in the leadership of George Fernandes. The Samata Party, which believes it has a greater stake in Bihar than the JD(U), could not reconcile itself to losing control of theunited party. All this is good news for Laloo Yadav who, despite the poor showing in the Lok Sabha elections, still retains much of his caste-based support.

But unity in the National Democratic Alliance could have posed problems for the RJD supremo, who has recently lost the support of the Congress and the CPI.

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Whether the JD(U)-Samata leaders will eventually rue the decision to retain their separate identities or not, it exposes their claim that they had the nation’s interest in mind when last year they announced their intention to merge their parties. At that time their calculation was that by contesting on a common symbol, they would be able to bargain better with the BJP in the post-election scenario. That they were not wide of the mark was borne out by the disproportionately large representation the two-party combine managed to get in the Atal Behari Vajpayee ministry. It is precisely this bargaining capacity that they will be squandering by contesting on their own symbols.

The BJP, which hadapprehensions about the JD-Samata unity move in the initial stages, may not, therefore, find anything amiss in the goings on in the Janata Parivar this time. Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar’s disclaimer about his candidacy for the chief ministership is a measure of the political compulsions his party faces. On the other hand, Ram Vilas Paswan’s readiness to support Fernandes’ leadership of the united party should be seen as a fortification of his own claim for the leadership of the state if the NDA emerges the winner.

Whatever be the calculations of the parties concerned, the sight of them contesting on their own symbols will not show the NDA in a good light. Laloo Yadav has in the past proved that he is no pushover. Five years ago, he was able to dub the then Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan’s obstinacy on certain aspects of polling in the state as a conspiracy against him. Yadav turned it to his own advantage. It only shows his ability to cash in on even adversities. This is all the more reasonthat the allies of the NDA should sort out their differences and come to an agreed formula to face Laloo Yadav. The alternative is to let what the NDA calls "the jungle Raj" to continue.