Patna,(BiharTimes): With just four out of 13 RJD MLAs in reality crossing over to Janata Dal (United) it can now be said that the whole operation failed to achieve the desired result. Actually the JD(U) wanted to engineer a split by winning 15 out of 22 MLAs to avoid anti-Defection law. But it could ‘procure’ the signatures of just 13 MLAs. But within an hour six MLAs, and later three more, rushed to the party office or the residence of former chief minister, Rabri Devi, to announce that they are with the RJD. They all accused the chief minister. Nitish Kumar, and Speaker, Uday Narayan Chaudhary of playing a dirty game and alleged that their signatures were forged.

Nine of these 13 MLAs attended the RJD legislature party meeting on Tuesday afternoon. The party chief, Lalu Prasad Yadav, , was present on the occasion. Later, Lalu led these MLAs to the Assembly to parade them before the Speaker, but he was not there. They all raised slogans against Nitish Kumar. They met the secretary of the Assembly.

Now with just four RJD MLAs on its side, it can be said that the whole operation carried out by the JD(U) got aborted. The gang of four who switched sides are Samrat Chaudhary, Raghuvendra Pratap Singh, Akhtar-ul-Iman and Jawaid Eqbal Ansari. The first named is the chief whip of the party while all the four are MLAs for more than one term. One way or the other they all are ambitious to contest the Lok Sabha election. So even if they lose the Assembly seat they may be put up as the Janata Dal (United) candidate. Whether they would succeed or not is a different story.

While Samrat is interested from Khagaria and Bhagalpur, Jawaid Eqbal from Banka, Akhtar-ul-Iman from Kishanganj and Raghvendra from Ara. The problem with people like Akhtar-ul-Iman is that he is keen to contest from Kishanganj and the seat is most likely to go to the sitting Congress MP, Maulana Asrar-ul-Haq. The RJD is helpless as to how can it demand the Congress not to put up its sitting MP. Since there is no scope in RJD he decided to switch side.

The JD(U) might have succeeded partially in its efforts, but it failed to net any big fish. Its failure to get the leader of RJD in the state Assembly, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, was a major setback.

All these weeks rumours were doing the rounds that Siddiqui was the one who might cross over to JD(U) as the Madhubani seat, which he last time contested and lost by just a small margin of 10,000 might go to Dr Shakeel Ahmad of the Congress, who in fact ended up third.

But the Monday’s split gave the opportunity to Siddiqui to show that he is very much with the RJD and all the news were baseless and wrong. Whether he gets ticket from Madhubani or not he had emerged as a powerful leader of the party.

No doubt there was panic in the RJD leadership on Monday and many observers started writing Lalu Yadav’s political obituary. But the way he fought back and got the nine MLAs back only firmed the resolve of the party rank and file.

In constrast a day later Nitish Kumar is being shown in a poor light. Had he actually succeeded it certainly would have been a big achievement, but that was not to be.

Today even Lalu’s bitterest critic like Giriraj Singh of the BJP, condemned the manner in which Nitish Kumar played the whole game. He said that the chief minister would never succeed in his efforts.

A wounded tiger is much more ferocious. It is to been whether this happens with the RJD as JD(U) on Monday definitely failed to kill it.