Laloo Yadav thrilled as NDA partners can’t work out who gets how much

On the last day of withdrawal of nominations today, mutual contests were in the the offing in about half of the 108 seats in this phase. Even if an accord among the BJP, Samata Party, Janata Dal (United) and the Bihar People’s Party is reached at this stage, the parties can only declare that their candidates have retired in favour of those allotted the seat. But their name and symbol will continue to remain in the ballot papers, with the possibility of the retiring candidates polling sufficient votes to upset thechances of the official ones.

There is now talk that the Samata Party, which is being seen as the villain of the piece by the other alliance partners, will put up candidates in most of the 324 seats and give up any pretence of fighting on a common front if the alliance does not work out. Similarly, BJP circles also do not rule out the possibility of isolating the Samata and contesting the elections together with the JD (U) and BPP.

According to information reaching here, the Samata had filed nominations in 45 seats (four were asked to withdraw), the JD (U) in 32 and the BJP in over 90.

“There is no dispute on about 200 seats. For the rest, talks are going on and we are hopeful that a deal will be worked out by tomorrow,” a senior BJP leader from Bihar said.

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha today held informal parleys with Samata leaders George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar in an effort to break the deadlock.

Several rounds of talks among the NDA leaders to identify the seats to be contested by each ofthe parties failed to yield common ground with the spirit of give-and-take totally missing. Such acrimony was generated during the talks that the dramatis personae nearly came to blows on more than one occasion.

In fact, hints that the alliance was a non-starter could be found in the statements of both JD (U) and Samata leaders. JD (U) spokesman M Raghupathy openly accused the Samata of “non-cooperation”, describing its attitude as “unfortunate”. This, despite his saying that the JD (U)’s prime objective was to “save the NDA.”

Minutes later, Samata chief Jaya Jaitley retorted: “We can say the same about the JD (U).” She went a step further to attack the BJP as well when she said that as the “big brother” in the alliance it should have resolved the dispute.

“We have no intention of breaking the alliance. Just because we have sacrificed the most for the alliance, it does not mean we will give up our claim even on our sure seats,” she said.

Jaitley said that it was understandable if her partycadres lose patience over the way the talks had dragged on. “If the Samata does not get the seat that is its due, how can you expect our workers to campaign for a candidate of another party?” she remarked.