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Top Bihar leaders join Samata

Soroor Ahmed in Patna

Two former members of legislative assembly, two former ministers, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and a former member of Parliament joined the Samata Party at the weekend.

The most prominent among those to cross over is former Rashtriya Janata Dal state president Uday Narayan Chaudhary. Besides, the RJD MLAs from Latehar and Shahpur, Baijit Ram and Dharampal Singh respectively also joined the Samata Party.

Another person to join the party is former Janata Dal MP Cheddi Paswan. The latter is considered a party-hopper. In the last one year, he has moved from the Bahujan Samaj Party to the RJD and then to the Samata which he joined once in the past too. Cheddi left the RJD after he was denied the Sasaram Lok Sabha ticket in the recent election.

Uday Narayan Chaudhary has been knocking at the door of the Samata Party ever since the last Lok Sabha election as the RJD had denied him the Nawada ticket. He was not given a ticket by RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav as he was under pressure from some Muslim social organisations which had blamed Chaudhary for the murder of hundreds of people of the community in Chatra, Gaya and Palamu districts. The Muslims alleged that Chaudhary was in hand in glove with the Left militants of the region.

Former minister and BJP leader Ram Prit Paswan also joined the Samata Party.

Union Agriculture Minister Nitish Kumar has said that Ram Prit Paswan had been trying to join the Samata Party for the last one year but "we were not taking him as he was a member of our ally, the BJP." However, he said that the party had to reconsider its decision when the BJP took a Samata MLA into its fold.

Nitish said that Congress MLA Uday Shankar Singh, who joined the Samata Party just before the Lok Sabha poll in the presence of Defence Minister George Fernandes, yesterday joined the BJP.

Nitish was irked by this decision of the state BJP leadership. When rediff.com contacted the BJP media cell yesterday to seek their views on the developments, he was told that Uday Shankar Singh he was a Congress member.

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