Sharad Yadav, president of the Janata Dal, is negotiating with Laloo Prasad Yadav for a merger of the JD with Laloo's Rashtriya Janata Dal. The quid pro quo is that Sharad Yadav gets Laloo's support in contesting the Madhavpur parliamentary constituency and Laloo replaces Sharad as president of the Janata Dal. The deal has been brokered by H.D. Deve Gowda. Ram Vilas Paswan, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction, towards the BJP-Samata along with several other JD leaders (this is a party with no workers, only leaders) from Orissa and Karnataka.

In Tamil Nadu it is just a matter of time before G.K. Moopanar consents to the TMC's return to the Congress fold, even though the latter may end up aligning with the reviled AIADMK. This will leave P. Chidambaram high and dry. The hostility between Chidambaram and Jayalalitha is too deep for any reconciliation -- Jaya's antagonism goes back to Rajiv Gandhi's tenure as prime minister when she resented Chidambaram's superiorattitude about everything, including his command over English. Jaya prides herself on her excellent English.

Wrong conclusion

Delhi's arm-chair pundits have again got it wrong. They predict that the collapse of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party will automatically lead to the resurgence of the Congress in UP. But the ground reality is rather different. It is more likely that the BSP will occupy the space created by Muslim voters' disenchantment with the SP. The results of the 1998 election show that the BSP lost nine seats in Uttar Pradesh by a margin of less than 20,000 votes and these parliamentary constituencies had a high percentage of minority voters. The BSP got nearly 21 per cent of the total vote compared to the Congress share of 5.4 per cent, the SP's 28 per cent and the BJP's 36 per cent. Of the BSP's five MPs in the dissolved Parliament two were Muslims. The BSP in fact is amenable to a tie-up with the Congress in UP only if the Congress were to agree to become the very juniorpartner.

Amar's vichitra katha

Mulayam Singh Yadav's burly rustic followers swear they will settle scores with his glib-talking city-smart lieutenant Amar Singh once the elections are over. They blame the businessman-cum-politician for advising their party boss so wrongly that the Samajwadi Party has been pushed into a ditch.Just a few years back, Amar was a high profile AICC member courtesy Madhavrao Scindia. The switch to the SP came after Deve Gowda became Prime Minister. Amar acted as go-between and interpreter between Mulayam, who knew little English, and Deve Gowda, who knew less Hindi. (Not surprisingly Amar now says that Sonia Gandhi too needs an interpreter!)) Mulayam was so taken up by his Mr Fixit, he gave him a Rajya Sabha seat.

Who tipped off the media that Amar was meeting the BJP's Narendra Modi at senior BJP lawyer Arun Jaitley's residence is an interesting question. The popular impression is that the Congress alerted the Press that the SP and the BJP representatives were sewingup a deal. Others feel it was the BJP which acted with Machiavellian cunning by leaking the news of the get-together to compromise Mulayam and thus marginalise its old enemy. But it is not in the BJP's interest to discredit the Samajwadi Party too much, since it suits the party to have a three-way contest in UP. The nervous reaction of those involved suggests they were caught completely unawares. A little bird tells me it was a BJP Deep Throat who tipped off friends in the media in a bid to settle scores with rivals within the party.

Poaching Season

George Fernandes's Samata Party wants to poach from a friendly ally, the BJD of Orissa. The BJD is ripe for pickings since most of the former MPs are fed up with their boss, Naveen Patnaik, Biju's dilettante son who has little time for party colleagues. Samta's justification is that if it does not explore the possibility of a merger with the BJD dissidents, many of them will cross over to the Congress.

Though `Pappu', as Patnaik is referred to amongDelhi's chattering classes, has been confiding to his socialite friends that politics is too dirty a game for him and he wants out, he shows no sign of relinquishing his position as head of the party named after his father. Loyalty testFormer Home Secretary B.P. Singh, who shared a good rapport with his minister L.K. Advani for long, was transferred out abruptly because the government suddenly became suspicious of his loyalty. There was evidence to suggest that Singh still kept in touch with his old Congress bosses, including former minister of state for home Matang Singh and Sitaram Kesri. The Home Ministry, which processed the case asking for Presidential sanction to prosecute Madhavsinh Solanki in the Bofors case is suspected of leaking the news to the Congress, which is why it stepped up its plan to topple the Vajpayee government. The last straw was when Singh informed the Election Commission that deployment of security forces for a June poll was not feasible, the somewhat paranoid BJP felt his report wasmeant to help the enemy.