NEW DELHI, 19 February 2004 — Barely a month after the controversial merger of the Samata Party with the Janata Dal (U), one of the prime rebel MPs, Raghunath Jha, has joined Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Jha, along with Brahmanand Mandal, both erstwhile Samata Party members, had raised the banner of revolt even before the merger, against the autocratic style of party colleague and Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar. They had castigated party president George Fernandes for succumbing to Kumar’s bullying tactics.
Laloo, while readmitting Jha into the party expressed happiness over his re-entry into the RJD, which he said “will certainly boost upper caste voters.”
The JD(U) top brass, however, chose to dismiss Jha’s defection as ‘’insignificant.’’ Flanked by the party’s Parliamentary Board chairman and Union Food Minister Sharad Yadav, Nitish said: ‘’This will in no way affect our electoral prospects in Bihar. Jha’s defection has no significance. In Bihar, this is nothing new.’’
He said,”I am glad it happened. Jha should have left a long ago.’’ He also believed Jha’s switch to the RJD would not sway upper caste votes.
Both leaders expressed confidence they would not have any differences with senior partner BJP on the issue of seat-sharing in Bihar and Jharkhand in the
coming Lok Sabha polls.
Sharad said: ‘’We expect a just and fair share of seats and we hope it will be decided on the basis of our performance in the last
election and our performance in the country as a whole.’’
While JD(U) leaders believed they will retain their share of 25 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, they did foresee a tussle in the division of the 14 seats in
Jharkhand. The BJP, which won 12 seats out of 14 last time, has declared it would like to contest all 14 seats yet again.
In another development, the ruling National Democratic Alliance got a shot in the arm yesterday with National Agricultural Federation(NAFED) chairman Ajit Kumar Singh joining the Janata Dal United). Son of the late Bihar MP Tapeshwar Singh, he was a member of the All India Congress Committee and was admitted into the JD(U) in the presence of parliamentary board chairman Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar.
Singh said that he was joining the JD(U) to bring Bihar back into the national mainstream as far as development was concerned. The state was finding it
difficult even to have its basic amenities like roads, hospitals and schools while the country had achieved a massive eight percent growth.
Singh is considered to be a man with a large political base in Bhojpur and Rohtas which form part of his father’s Lok Sabha constituency Bikramganj. Along with Singh, another senior leader Virender Singh also joined the JD(U).
