Aug. 18 : Defence minister George Fernandes is expected to take over as Samata Party president shortly. Incumbent president V.V. Krishna Rao submits his resignation, paving way for election of Fernandes as party chief. Railway minister Nitish Kumar, who was in Hajipur to attend a meeting of the new East-Central zone, said the party's executive meeting on September 1 in Delhi would elect Fernandes president. With the graph of BJP going down and Assembly elections coming up in 10 states next year, the Samata leadership feels that the party should have a leader of Fernandes' stature. Besides, intense infighting has also forced the party to fall back on Fernandes, who was the founder president since 1994. In January 2000, Fernandes made room for Jaya Jaitly who quit in the wake of the Tehelka scandal. Samata leader Prabhunath Singh's public criticism of the Prime Minister for cancelling petrol pump allotments was the latest embarrassment for the party top brass. Before that, the Samata's Bihar legislative party chief Umashankar Singh threw it into a turmoil when he took away a group of MLAs to merge with the Janata Dal (United). At a meeting with the state leaders, the railway minister floated the plan for the change of guard to pull the party back from the brink of a split. The plan is believed to have received wide support. Fernandes is facing boycott in Parliament by Opposition parties protesting his reinduction into the Cabinet before the Venkataswami commission cleared his name in the Tehelka scandal. But he had launched an 'apolitical' outfit, the Lok Manch, last month, ostensibly to relaunch him as a socialist who had not lost his moorings. The outfit shares RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch's views on labour reforms, disinvestment and employment generation. The defence minister has of late been critical of the BJP and the Vajpayee government for 'anti-labour' policies. Last year, he had shared an SJM platform to slam the Montek Singh Ahluwalia report on labour reforms. The Samata's recent national council meeting in Vijayawada had also passed a resolution criticising the economic policies of the government. Fernandes' apolitical outfit, set up on July 4, had organised a conference in Delhi to highlight the pitfalls of the BJP-led government's economic policies. It held a regional conference at Bhavnagar in Gujarat yesterday, while a regional southern conference will be held in Mysore on September 5 and 6. The north-eastern conference will be in Guwahati on September 28 and 29. Krishna Rao was appointed president last year as a stop gap arrangement following the resignation of Jaitly. In his resignation letter addressed to Fernandes, Rao said that in view of the challenges before the party ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections in 10 states and the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, Fernandes should head the party. Rao said the party's national executive meeting should be convened fast to elect Fernandes president. The executive meeting will also decide the date and venue of the party's national council meeting, he said.