Pushed against the wall and wary of the upcoming polls, regional parties within the NDA have begun the process of getting together to increase their collective clout vis a vis the BJP.Not only this, their idea is to fish in the ‘‘non-BJP, non-Congress, non-Left’’ pool of parties so that they can prevent the Congress and the Left from creating an alliance which could challenge the NDA.In fact, yesterday’s merger of the Samata and the JD(U) announced by George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar is just the first stage of this three-tier strategy.Stage Two will be the creation of a front of regional parties within the NDA followed by Stage Three in which feelers will be sent to other parties like Sharad Pawar’s NCP, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP, and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK.The second stage has already begun with Fernandes having sounded out Mamata Banerjee, BJD President Naveen Patnaik, NC President Omar Abdullah, and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala.All of them are said to be favourably inclined to the idea.‘‘It would be a win-win situation for both sides, and in Bengal the Trinamool Congress and the BJP will fight the elections together,’’ said Trinamool MP Dinesh Trivedi.Incidentally, the Samata-JD(U) merger has been effected with the blessings of the BJP mainly because of the fear that the Congress and the RJD in Bihar could wean away the splinter groups of both Samata and the JD(U).This fear isn’t misplaced given the series of splits.The Samata and JD(U) fought the 1999 Lok Sabha elections on one symbol of the JD(U) and won 22 seats. But soon 12 broke away to form the Samata.The 10 of the JD(U) further split with Ram Vilas Paswan taking away four members who, in turn, split into two groups of two each. The six of JD(U) are also not together, with two of them having written to the Lok Sabha Speaker asking for recognition as a separate group.But Fernandes’s interest goes beyond Bihar. He needs the help of Nitish Kumar to win a Lok Sabha election from Bihar, but once in Delhi, Nitish needs his help to retain his portfolio. Sharad Yadav is also not sure of winning from Madhepura this time.The regional players are also aware that in the 2004 elections, if the BJP slumps and the Congress gains aren’t significant, they are the ones who will have more space to position themselves.Whether it is Fernandes, Mulayam, Pawar, Chandrababu or Jaya—and they are in close touch with each other—each of them is angling for the magical figure of 30 so that he/she could play kingmaker—if not the king.
