New Delhi, May 7: Nitish Kumar today claimed the Janata family merger talks was on the "right track" but indicated the finalisation could take some more time, pointing out that the big political decisions should not be done hurriedly.

"The talks are on track and proceeding in the right direction," Nitish said, emerging out of a meeting with Mulayam Singh Yadav in the evening.

"Big political decisions should not be done in a hurry," the Bihar chief minister remarked on asked by when the process would be over. He said that "all is well" and claimed that soon all the issues would be settled.

Lalu Prasad, however, was not present at today's meeting.

Nitish met Mulayam, at the latter's residence, and this indicated that the chief minister could be pleading his case before the senior-most Janata family member. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is learnt to be acting as the mediator between Lalu and Nitish to settle issues of seat distribution between the RJD and the JDU that seems to have emerged as a tangle. Nitish was closeted for around one-and-a-half hour with Mulayam.

Today's Nitish-Mulayam meeting comes after the first one-to-one meeting between Nitish and Lalu yesterday where the two leaders failed to resolve the seat sharing issue for the year-end Assembly elections.

Insiders have indicated that differences still persist among the two Bihar leaders and it could take some more time before they reach an agreement. The two leaders are learnt to be engaged in a threadbare discussion on each and every assembly seat to determine as to who stands a better chance to win.

"Nitish could have sought Mulayam intervention to settle the differences over seat-sharing with Lalu," said a JDU leader on asked about the subject of today's meeting.

Apart from seat sharing, the issue relating to the symbol of the new party also looks unsettled. Technically, Samajwadi Party leaders said, the new party has to sacrifice all their separate election symbols and opt for a new one.

The Samajwadi Party is not ready to forego the "bicycle" symbol. If the Samajwadi Party insists on the "bicycle" symbol then the RJD, JDU and the other Janata family parties could be compelled to merge in the party.