United to split

The merger, which facilitated the arrival in the National Democratic Alliance NDA leaders like Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, who had voted against the Vajpayee ministry, was clearly aimed at strengthening the bargaining position of leaders like Fernandes and Ramakrishna Hegde in the post-election scenario.

Once this limited purpose was achieved and the JDU members got away with plum ministerial posts, they suddenlyrealised the advantages of retaining their pre-merger identities. A constitutional body like the Election Commission certainly could not have gone by such weird arrangements. Since they had contested the Lok Sabha elections on the JDU symbol, they could only be treated as JDU members.

Obviously, what precipitated the crisis and a rethinking on merger is the election to the Bihar Assembly. Fernandes and those supporting him believed that if the Samata Party merged in the JDU, he would lose the power to distribute party tickets which vested with the party leader. It is for this very reason that a powerful group within the JDU too refused to enter into any deal whereby a Samata party leader could have been chosen the leader of the united party.

If anything, all this showed that the tentative merger they had effected last year was nothing but a sham. The haste with which the Samata Party formally broke away from the JDU and elected Jaya Jaitly as president shows that it does no longer want to becaught napping. The split in the JDU parliamentary party as a result of these developments may not affect the electoral understanding the two parties have already reached with the BJP to fight the forthcoming Assembly elections. But more than that, it is the political fallout of these developments that should worry the NDA as it readies itself to take on the ruling Rashtriya Janata Dal.

Having fought with each other so bitterly, the JDU-Samata leaders will have a tough time convincing the electorate that they are one when it comes to fighting Laloo Prasad Yadav and company. The spectacular victory the NDA achieved in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar was facilitated in no small measure by the new-found unity in the JDU-Samata combine.

Since there are no issues like Kargil to help the NDA this time, its entire campaign will have to be directed against the misrule of the RJD and its own ability to provide an effective, alternative government that can save the state from total ruin. This task could havebeen easier if the leaders concerned had shown a greater sense of understanding and had not seen everything in their narrow, selfish perspective.