JD stays united for one more day as key meet is postponed

The two groups in the JD — one favouring a tie-up with the BJP-led National Democractic Alliance and the other opposed to it — were planning out their strategies to stake claim to the name and symbol of the JD once the party splits.

While the group comprising Karnataka Chief Minister J.H.Patel, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan were confident of retaining the party name and symbol, the other faction which includesformer prime minister H.D.Deve Gowda, S.Jaipal Reddy and S.R.Bommai was rubbishing the rival’s claims to enjoying a majority in the various organisational bodies and the legislature wings.

The Gowda group claimed that it had the support of 11 out of the 17 members who comprise the PAC and six out of the seven Rajya Sabha members. The other side contended that this did not amount to much as the PAC was not an elected body. It said that it enjoyed two-thirds majority in the national executive which is an elected body, besides overwhelming support in the legislature wings in the States of Karnataka, Orissa and Bihar.

“Our legal experts have told us that there is no way the symbol can be taken away from us because we would not be splitting the party. It is the Gowda group which would want to go away,” according to one leader who is strongly advocating a tie-up with the NDA.

The rival claims notwithstanding, the possibility of the Election Commission freezing the “wheel” symbol as an interim measurebefore the final dispute is settled is not discounted in the background of precedents to that effect.

Sources in the Patel group claimed that Prime Minister A.B.Vajpayee has promised the JD that he would ensure that the BJP part with 110 out of the 224 Assembly seats and 10 out of the 28 Lok Sabha seats as against the demand for 130 and 13 seats respectively.

This morning, both the groups held “parallel” PAC meetings, one at Karnataka Bhavan presided over by Patel and the other at Gowda’s residence. Samata Party chief George Fernandes had a dinner meeting with Patel, Yadav, I.K.Gujral, Paswan, Nitish Kumar, Kamla Sinha and Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik ahead of tomorrow’s wider consultations.

Sources in the Gowda camp said that efforts were afoot to strike alliances with Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party. Gowda is said to have started speaking to these leaders as well as those of the Left parties toform a third front.

Meanwhile, reports from Bangalore indicate that Gowda’s plans of bringing down the Patel government were coming unstuck as not more than 20 MLAs were willing to be part of any destabilisation game when Assembly elections were just one and a half months away.