‘Janata Parivar merger not possible before Bihar polls’

NEW DELHI: Less than a month after the formal announcement of their coming together, the merger of the erstwhile Janata Parivar parties hit a roadblock as SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav said it was not possible before the Bihar Assembly polls and any such move now would amount to signing the “death warrant” of his own party.

But while Yadav, the Samajwadi Party National General Secretary, said it was due to “technicalities” that the merger would be pushed back, his comment drew a terse response from JD(U) President Sharad Yadav, who said the merger had already happened.

The SP leader insisted that the best course of action would be for the Lalu Prasad-led RJD and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) to fight the Bihar Assembly polls — slated for later this year — under a seatsharing arrangement as they will lose their party symbols if they merge now and that would cause confusions among voters.

“The merger is not possible before the Bihar election due to technicalities. If we merge in a hurry, it will be like signing the death warrant of my own party,” the SP leader told reporters.

His comments are a clear signal of the unease within the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led party over the merger as many SP leaders believe that the UP-based party stands to gain nothing from an exercise aimed at consolidating the base of two Bihar-based outfits, JD(U) and RJD, before the election later this year.

The merger of the Janata Parivar parties was announced last month with a declaration that Mulayam will head the new entity.