JD(U) leaders meet Mulayam, ask him to ‘project Nitish as Janata Parivar CM face’

The ruling JD(U) in Bihar has urged SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to project party leader and CM Nitish Kumar as the Janata Parivar’s candidate for the top post in the assembly elections.

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The ruling JD(U) in Bihar has urged Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to project party leader and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the Janata Parivar’s candidate for the top post in the assembly elections.

Both JD(U) president Sharad Yadav as well as Nitish himself met Mulayam — who is expected to head the Janata Parivar after the formal merger of six regional parties — to put forth their request. While Sharad had met Mulayam on Friday, Nitish, who could not attend the meeting as he was recuperating after an eye surgery, met him on Saturday.

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Both leaders told Mulayam that given the current atmosphere of the state, the Janata Parivar was at an advantage there, said sources. Nitish’s clean image, good track record and personal stature gave him a clear edge over leaders from the rival camp, they are believed to have told the SP chief.

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If the Janata Parivar closed its ranks behind Nitish, its victory was a foregone conclusion, the chief minister and Sharad told Mulayam, said sources. The JD(U) leaders pointed out that neither Lalu, who had been convicted in the fodder scam, nor his wife Rabri Devi, who has suffered electoral setbacks, could be projected for the top job, said sources.

But the RJD, headed by Nitish’s former political adversary Lalu Prasad Yadav, may not agree with the JD(U). The party does not want a chief ministerial candidate to be named right now and feels that a final decision on the issue should be taken only after the election results are declared, said sources in the RJD.

The party also feels that electoral performances of the Janata Parivar parties in the 2010 assembly election — when the JD(U)-BJP alliance won a decisive mandate in the state — cannot be the basis of distributing seats between them for the forthcoming polls because political alignments have undergone a sea-change since then, said sources. The RJD wants a fair and realistic distribution of seats and more clarity on the issue, but Nitish has been non-committal so far, said sources in the Janata Parivar.

During the meeting, Nitish reportedly made it clear to Mulayam that all the six parties in the Janata Parivar had unanimously put their faith in the SP chief and accepted him as their leader. It was time he took a final view and enforced it without any delay so that the Janata Parivar could concentrate on the election campaign, Nitish told Mulayam, said sources. They added that the SP chief has assured the Bihar CM that he would speak to Lalu and resolve the differences between the two leaders.

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Lalu, who had earlier urged former Bihar Chief Minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha chief Jitan Ram Manjhi to join the grand alliance, is keen on getting the former JD(U) leader on board, they said.

According to the seat-sharing formula reportedly being discussed,JD(U) and RJD will contest 100 seats each of the 243 assembly seats, while the remaining 43 seats will be distributed among the Congress, the NCP, the CPI and the CPM.