Gowda-Laloo Truce Temporary

Though the Dals national executive has set a time-table for holding organisational elections by January, Yadav will not easily give up the party post, in keeping with the one-man, one-post principle.

At Saturdays meeting, the Gowda camp was in a minority against the Laloo camp. Laloo had come prepared and it was for anyone to see that numerically, Laloo was one up on Gowda when it came to support from the executive members,' said a member from Uttar Pradesh.

In any case, the hype about a possible move to replace Yadav may only have been an outflanking tactic by the Gowda camp to ensure that Yadav did not allow Gowda to be embarrassed over his recent meeting with Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. The controversial meeting virtually found no mention at the meeting.

We were quite surprised that everything went off so smoothly. Judging by the newspaper reports, we were expecting a lot of action. Never in the last eight years has the executive meeting been so peaceful. Normally, members scream and pound the tables with their fists,' said a member.

Interestingly, in the two addresses that Gowda delivered, he mainly talked about the working president' (Sharad Yadav) and secretary-general' (Ram Vilas Paswan) when he spoke of the tasks undertaken by the party or its future plans - like partys meetings and campaign in Jammu and Kashmir and UP and ticket distribution for the polls.

Though this is a minor point, but the fact remains that the PM hardly took the party presidents name in his speeches,' said a Dal functionary.

Even while talking on the organisational elections, Gowda is learnt to have asked Bapu Kaldate - who has been assigned the task of completing the polls - to consult the working president and the secretary-general'.