Within days of announcing its decision to merge with Janata Dal (U), the Samata Party ran into trouble with two of its rebel MPs writing to Speaker Manohar Joshi. The MPs, Raghunath Jha and Brahmanand Mandal, complained they had not been consulted on the merger and they wanted the name of the party to stay Samata and not what George Fernandes and others decided with Sharad Yadav.At their press conference today, the MPs said the two were aware of the merger and had opposed it strongly. Jha and Mandal said they had approached the EC to allow them to retain the Samata Party recognition and its flaming torch symbol. They said party president Fernandes had acted in an ‘‘arbitrary and undemocratic manner’’. In the letter to the Speaker, the two MPs underlined the fact that nobody in Samata had spoken to them about the merger. They said they were not taken into confidence because Fernandes and Railway Minister Nitish Kumar knew they would be against such a move. Jha and Mandal claimed the decision to dissolve the Samata was ‘‘unauthorised and illegal’’.Responding to questions, the two MPs said they would continue to be a part of the NDA at least for the time being. They accused Fernandes and Kumar of misleading partymen and said the merger was carried out in a hurry as they realised they would not win their Parliamentary constituencies. ‘‘They had misled the partymen in Bihar,’’ Jha and Mandal said.What has happened, according to these rebels, was a ‘‘drawing room’’ merger where the wishes of grassroot level workers have been completely ignored, the leaders said.
