Opposition Unity

Now a days there are many talks happening on the subject of unity of major opposition parties so as to stop BJP coming back to power. Today, friends I am taking you back in 70s when first time opposition parties were united, under the leadership of Jaiprakash Narayan, for the general elections in 1997 just after the emergency. I am giving below the brief history of  what happened to that experiment.

Formation of Janata Party

As all opposition leaders were freed from the jail after elections were announced on 18^th Jan 1977. Every opposition leader wanted Jai Prakash Narayan’s support to fight the coming election. At that time JP insisted that all the opposition parties come together and form the united front for fighting elections against congress party. Therefore on 23^rd Jan 1977, Janata Party was officially launched,It consisted of Janata Morcha, Charan Singh’s Bhartiya Lok Dal, Swatantra Party, Raj Narain & George Fernandes Socialist party of India and Jana Sangh. All these parties dissolved their individual identities, although their political ideologies were different but still they listen to the call of JP, who had been seen as the ideological leader of anti emergency movement and now the Janata Party, and agreed to unite to throw Congress out from the govt. Morarji Desai was elected as Chairman, Ramakrishan Hegde as General Secretary and Lal Kishan Advani as Party’s Spokesperson.

The Party’s manifesto for coming General Election was released, and presented the voters with

“ a choice between Freedom & Slavery, between democracy and dictatorship, between abdicating the power of the people and asserting it, between Gandhian path and the way that has led the many nations down with dictatorship, instability, military adventure and national disaster.”

After the Emergency was lifted,  even many Congressmen felt oppressed in the Congress Party, they started defecting to other parties. The most significant of them was Babu Jagjivan Ram, who commended great support from Dalits. A former Defence Minister, he alongwith his supporters left Congress and formed Congress for Democracy party, other co founders included former Chief minister of Orrisa Nandini Satpathy, Former Minister of State for Finance KR Ganesh, ND Tiwari and Raj Mangal Pandey.

It was finally decided that Congress for Democracy will contest the election with Janata Party’s manifesto and would join the Janata Party in Parliament and later merge with it. Even CPM announced that they will not put their candidates against Janata party. The following were constituent parties of Janata Party

Bhartiya Lok dal, Bhartiya Kranti Dal, Swatantra Party,Socialist Party, Praja Socialist Party, Samyukta Socialist Party, Utkal congress, Bhartiya Jana Sangh, Congress(O), Congress for Democracy, Congress (R) rebels like Chandra Shekhar , Krisnakant,Ramdhan,Mohan Dharia and many others.

In the election Janata party plus their allies won about 350 seats  and Congress was reduced to about 150 seats.

Janata Alliance govt

Janata  alliance Govt started   under the Prime Minister ship of Morarji Desai, his other Cabinet Colleagues were as follows

1. Jagjivan Ram- Deputy Prime Minister & Defence Minister.

2.Charan Singh- Deputy Prime Minister & Home Minister.

3.HM Patel- Finance Minister.

4.Atal Bihari Vajpaye- External Affair Minister

5.George Fernandes-Industry Minister.

6.Prakash Singh Badal-Agricultural Minister.

7.Sikandar Bakht- Works & Housing Minister.

8.LK Advani-Information & Broadcasting Minister.

9.Pratap Chanda – Education Minister.

10.Shanti Bhushan-Law Minister.

11.Brijlal Varma-Communication Minister.

12.Madhu Dandvate-Railway Minister.

13.Raj Narain- Health Minister.

14.HN Bahuguna- Petroleum Minister.

15.Ravindra Varma-Labour& Parliamentry Affairs Minister

16.Biju Patnaik.

17.Purushottum Kaushik

All big stalwarts in their respective parties earlier.

Above were cabinet rank ministers, there were more ministers with state rank. The ministers were from various parties with different ideologies, attitudes, thinking etc. How they will work together and survive as a one cohesive unit.

Although the Govt started on very positive note, but the main constituent parties had different ideologies and slowly it became difficult to function. Socialists and Secular Janata Politicians had a hatred of Hindu Nationalist agenda of Jan Sangh & RSS, and there were ministers in govt who owe their existence to RSS as they were also member of RSS. The noted ministers being Atal Bihari Vajpayee & LK Advani. In 1979, they were told to either be in Govt or resign from the Govt and all the Jan Sangh ministers resigned from the ministerial post and Party. This was the first sign of break up with in Janata Party.

There were many other factors which eroded the support for Janata Party’s Govt, the main being prosecutions of abuses during Emergency period, the cases were not progressing in the court of Law , due to lack of proper evidence. Due to this cases against Congress Leaders including Indira & Sanjay Gandhi started getting stalled in the court. Daily news of these cases in media started evoking sympathies for Congress Leaders, and the Public started feeling it is a witch hunt.

By 1979 support for Morarji Desai started dwindling, due to worsening scenario of economic conditions as well news started coming out his family misusing his position ,  corruption etc. Plus his attitude was also of stubborn type, and was not ready to listen to others, this led to his losing base in Party also. His main opponent was Charan Singh, and protesting against Morarji Desai’s leadership, he resigned from Govt and  withdrew his and Lok Dal members’ support to Govt., Charan Singh also accused Morarji Desai of corruption and having soft corner for Hindu fundamentalist organisation. On 19^th July 1979, Morarji Desai submitted his Govt resignation to the President.

As by this time Jai Prakash Narayan had expired, there was no Indian leader who could have brought back the warring factions of Janata Party together, the party disintegrated.

President Sanjiva Reddy appointed Charan Singh as new Prime Minister, who had a support of only 64 members of his earlier party Bhartiya Lok Dal, and he was given a time to prove his majority on the floor of House. The balance MPs of Janata Party and MPs from Jan Sangh refused to offer any support to Charan Singh. Parallelly  Jagjivan Ram also started gathering support with the hope that he might get support from Congress, as Congress refused support to Charan Singh. As Charan Singh was unable to muster the support, he resigned within 3 weeks. Seeing the scenario , that no group will be able to garner the support of more than 50% of members, President dissolved the Parliament, and announced fresh elections to be held in Jan 1980 . He  requested Charan Singh to continue as Care taker Prime Minister with care taker cabinet till the new govt is formed

Thus ended the Janata Party experiment  of Seventies.

So friends, even at present time also there are many leaders with their egos, and their main aim is to remove Modi. In 1977 , scenario was different because even general public had gone against Indira Gandhi in northern part of country due to emergency excesses. There is no such situation against Modi presently, which has been reflected in the state elections in past one and half years after demonitisation and implementation of GST.  And secondly there is no leader like Jaipraksh Narayan, who can bring the main opposition parties together, and every one listening to this leader.

So friends, wait and watch for the further development on this topic.

Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.