New Delhi, July 26 :     The proposal to hastily merge the Samata Party and the Lok Shakti into the Janata Dal was aimed at pre-empting Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee from weaning away Karnataka chief minister J.H. Patel and Bihar?s Ram Vilas Paswan to his camp. Lok Shakti sources said Vajpayee wanted 28 Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka to strengthen his position and did not care much for state BJP leaders who did not want to risk their Assembly poll prospects by carrying the weight of a ?discredited? Janata Dal regime. Samata Party president George Fernandes and Lok Shakti chief R.K. Hegde acted fast, not only pre-empting the Prime Minister?s move but also increasing their bargaining power in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a Samata Party source said. He, however, said Vajpayee did not plead for a merger, but only for some ?arrangement? between Lok Shakti, Janata Dal and BJP in Karnataka. The Prime Minister?s only fault was that he did not take Karnataka BJP leaders into confidence, the sources added. Vajpayee, sources said, told Patel that he already had the support of southern chief ministers Chandrababu Naidu and M. Karunanidhi and that his position would be further strengthened if Patel backed him. After Vajpayee spoke to Patel, Fernandes and Hegde got the Karnataka chief minister to agree to a merger. Though the BJP wanted only Ram Vilas Paswan to be included, Fernandes also roped in Dal president Sharad Yadav. Senior Samata Party leader and railway minister Nitish Kumar wanted Sharad Yadav in to keep Paswan under check. ?The Samata Party, BJP and Janata Dal were already working in Bihar. (Dal leaders Paswan and Sharad Yadav were backed by the BJP-Samata combine last year). There was no need for an outright merger,? sources said. NDA sources said the convergence of parallel interests have created problems. Leaders now have to wait for the outcome of the elections before deciding on their next step. However, the chief minister, who told reporters in Bangalore last week that he had had talks with Vajpayee, said today that he had consulted only Hegde and Fernandes. ?I have never consulted anybody except Hegde and Fernandes because we are not part of the NDA. I do not know if they consulted Vajpayee, but I was consulted by them (Hegde and Fernandes),? Patel said. The chief minister said he did not tell Vajpayee about an alliance with the NDA. ?I met him recently for some official work. We did not discuss politics,? Patel said. Commenting on reports that Vajpayee was kept in the dark about the issue, Patel said: ?Whether it is in the light or in the dark, it should be discussed between them (Vajpayee, Hegde and Fernandes). Not me. I don?t know.?