Patna,(BiharTimes): Former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, met Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and his own party president Sharad Yadav separately in New Delhi on Saturday to discuss the modalities of merger of five parties of Janata Parivar.

While meeting with Sharad, he also discussed the likelihood of the merger of Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar before the actual merger of the five parties at the national level.The five parties to merge are Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular) and Indian National Lok Dal.

Political observers are of the view that it is only in Bihar that the two strong regional parties are merging, therefore, the task is not so easy. As the Assembly election is just 10 months from now, the leaders of the two parties would like to see the whole process finalized smoothly. There are already a small section in both the parties who are opposed to the merger of the two parties. Some of them may even make it an issue to cross over to the BJP, which is in need of about 150 strong candidates for the next Asstmbly election. At present the party has around 90 legislators.

There is also fear of tussle for each and every post in the two merged parties of Bihar. Things are likely to come up in open at the time of ticket distribution as the number of claimants would certainly increase.
However, the hope of better performance by the united party may keep many other leaders within the fold even if they are denied ticket. 

The BJP would certainly be alarmed at this development as the August 21 bypolls for 10 seats had exposed its weakness. The RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance bagged six of them and even in two others the saffron party could win by a much smaller margin.

The recent developments have shown that Nitish Kumar is more keen than any other leaders to first befriend RJD and then see to it that the five parties merge. Bihar watchers are of the view that he had realized his mistake and has now assessed his real position––that RJD alone is always much stronger than the JD(U). While the JD(U)-CPI combine could bag only 17 per cent votes in the last Lok Sabha poll, the RJD-Congress-NCP alliance got as high as 30 per cent in comparison to the BJP-led alliance 39 per cent