On its last leg, JD plans to hop over into BJP camp

NEW DELHI, MAY 3: The existence of the Janata Dal as an entity with an anti-Congress, anti-BJP plank faces a serious threat with its unit...

NEW DELHI, MAY 3: The existence of the Janata Dal as an entity with an anti-Congress, anti-BJP plank faces a serious threat with its units in the three states where it has a major presence gradually moving towards an alliance with the BJP and its allies for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

If in Bihar, the party led by the likes of Ram Vilas Paswan may go in for a tie-up with the Samata Party, a BJP ally, to keep Laloo Prasad Yadav out, in Orissa a majority in the JD want an alliance with the Biju Janata Dal. And in Karnataka, the only state where the party is in power, the leadership is fighting to prevent a major faction led by Chief Minister J H Patel from teaming up with the Lok Shakti-BJP alliance.

In what looks like a last-ditch effort to keep the party unity intact, JD chief Sharad Yadav will play the referee in a meeting between rivals Patel and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda and other top leaders in Bangalore on Tuesday. Being held at the initiative of Deputy Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, aGowda man, the meeting hopes to paper over the differences between Patel and Gowda.

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The former prime minister desperately wants the party to remain in one piece, if not for anything but to deny arch-enemy Ramakrishna Hegde of the Lok Shakti the advantage. Hegde and Patel have had meetings recently to discuss a tie-up between their two parties, and the Samata Party.

Though Patel still does not feel comfortable to be in the company of the BJP, many of his supporters are indicating that this option is inevitable if the JD has to rid itself from Gowda’s suffocating clutches. Gowda in fact is keen on an alliance with the Congress in the hope of facilitating his re-entry to the Lok Sabha and his son’s to the Assembly.

In Bihar the state unit has been adopting an independent line in opposing Laloo’s RJD for quite some time now and an alliance with the Samata-BJP combine seems to be on the cards. Though Sharad Yadav would want Patel not to go the Lok Shakti-BJP way in Karnataka, he himself is not against theBihar unit giving up its resistance to the so-called communal forces in his home state.

Significant progress seems to have been made towards this end with Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar responding positively to Paswan’s overtures. Paswan told The Indian Express today that while nothing had been decided yet, the “JD welcomes help from any quarter in its fight against Laloo.”

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In Orissa, things are reaching a decisive phase with a major section of the JD seeking Sharad Yadav’s permission to the state unit to finalise its own alliances. The Union Coal Minister and Biju Janata Dal leader is moving closely with the JD leaders to strike an electoral understanding, if not a merger, with the JD.

Both the JD and the BJD say that forging a common front against the Congress will pay them rich dividends.