Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal and Lalu Prasad’s party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, each refuses to give up its own insignia
New Delhi : Even after three weeks of the merger between six political parties of the Janata Parivar into one with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as its head, the new party is unable to approach the Election Commission for the allotment of its poll symbol. The merger has run into jeopardy because Janata Dal of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Prasad are not ready to give up their respective symbols.
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””]Some UP ministers are averse to the merger as they say that Nitish and Lalu command no respect in the country’s biggest state [/alert]
Mulayam is also dragging his feet because his cousin and Samajwadi Party group leader, Ramgopal Yadav, is quite averse to have any say to Janata Dal(U) chief Sharad Yadav and party MP K C Tyagi, and Mulayam does not take any step without the consent of this cousin because of his deep political understanding. Other constituents of the new party are Janata Dal(S) of former PM H D eve Gowda, Indian National Lok Dal of Haryana’s Abhay Chautala and Loktantrik Samajwadi Party of former MP Kamal Morarka.
On the day last month, when all these leaders met at Mulayam’s house here and elected him as the president of the new party, Ramgopal Yadav deliberately abstained. Even Mulayam’s Chief Minister son, Akhilesh, and UP ministers are averse to this merger as they say that Nitish and Lalu command no respect in the country’s biggest state. They do not want these leaders to spread their tentacles in Uttar Pradesh.
An Election Commission official said the commission cannot take cognizance of the merger until the parties involved give a joint application. He said it would be difficult to allot a common symbol to the party to contest in various states. How can the commission allot the cycle symbol of the Samajwadi Party in Bihar when that symbol is not reserved in the state, he asked.
Even Nitish Kumar does not want to go to polls with the cycle symbol, instead of his Janata Dal’s arrow, since his fear is that it would not only create confusion, particularly in the rural areas that recognise his party from the arrow symbol, but also that ousted Chief Minister Jatin Ram Manjhi may go to the polls with the arrow symbol, uniting all those unhappy about the merger of the socialist parties. There is also a disgruntled group in the RJD that will claim the RJD’s lantern symbol if Lalu opts for the cycle.
Both Nitish and Lalu are getting desperate due to the delay in completing the formalities of the merger since they cannot wait any longer to launch their election campaigns for the Assembly polls later this year. Their problem is that they can’t launch a campaign without the symbol.
