Janata Dal splits! Laloo forms Rashtriya Janata Dal
George Iype in New Delhi
The ruling Janata Dal vertically split on Saturday, with Laloo Prasad Yadav launching a new political party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
Announcing the party's formation at a national convention of his loyalists in New Delhi, , the beleaguered Bihar chief minister said the Janata Dal which I "painstakingly formed and led all these years is full of snakes who conspire against me."
The convention attended by nearly 2,000 party delegates -- most of them from Bihar --also passed a resolution electing Laloo Yadav as the president of the parent party.
Sixteen Lok Sabha members and six Rajya Sabha MPs --all supporters of the Bihar CM -- participated in the meeting. Three central ministers -- Coal Minister Kanti Singh,
Non-Conventional Energy Sources Minister Captain Jai Narayan Nishad and Food and Civil Supplies Minister Raghubans Prasad Singh -- were also present.
Bihar Education Minister Ram Chander Purve proposed the name
Rashtriya Janata Dal. Party workers, who had gathered on the lawns of the New Bihar Bhavan, applauded and shouted slogans acclaiming Laloo Yadav as "the leader of the dalits and masses."
Laloo Yadav claimed his faction was the original Janata Dal as most of the
party workers had refused to participate in the JD presidential poll on Thursday. But he said his party would not desert the Gujral government.
"I met Gujral yesterday and told him that we will be very much a part of the UF government. We accept Gujral's
leadership and the Common Minimum Programme of the coalition," Laloo Yadav said.
Mounting a blistering attack on former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, the Bihar chief minister said JD working
president Sharad Yadav is "being used as a remote control by leaders who are more loyal to the Bharatiya
Janata Party than to the Janata Dal."
"Sharadji is a helpless, innocent man. He is like an actor on the stage where the prompter from behind the scene
has to dictate to him. Everybody knows who this prompter in JD is," the Bihar chief minister said, indirectly
blaming Deve Gowda for the JD crisis.
Laloo Yadav, who is poised to lose his Dal presidentship to his former confidant Sharad Yadav on Sunday, said: "I do not
accept the party poll because the ballot boxes can produce only a snake or a mouse."
"No one can keep Laloo Yadav in confinement for long, because I am the leader of the masses and I am
answerable only to them," he said, alleging that his enemies in the party have been working hard to implicate him
in the fodder scam.
Laloo Yadav's revolt is the most serious challenge yet to Gujral's 74-day tenure in office.
Political observers believe the RJD's birth is a bad omen for the United Front government as the Janata Dal, with 45 Lok Sabha members, is the largest constituent of the 13-party coalition government.
With some 16 MPs, including three central ministers, aligning with Laloo Yadav's new party, the JD's strength has now been effectively reduced to less than 30.
Both the Laloo Yadav and Sharad Yadav camps are now busy chalking out strategies
to isolate each other politically. Deve Gowda and his loyalists are in constant touch with UF partners like the Left parties, the
Samajwadi Party, the Telugu Desam, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Tamil Maanila Congress and the Asom Gana
Parishad to ensure that Laloo Yadav's RJD becomes a political untouchable.
It is unlikely the prime minister will drop the Laloo Yadav faction from the ruling coalition, given the shaky foundation on which his government stands.
The Dal drama is being keenly watched by the Congress; that party believes the downfall of the Gujral government will arise out of the inner contradictions within the UF coalition.
That Congress president Sitaram Kesri will offer a helping hand to Laloo Yadav's new party is certain. Kesri is eagerly waiting for an opportune time to withdraw support to Gujral and form a Congress-led coalition at the Centre.
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