Samajvadi Party leader Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s recent meeting with other regional leaders to explore possibilities of an alternative party was ridiculed by media commentators as an exercise in futility. The leaders who met decided to float not a Front but a new party in the New Year. They should not be discouraged by media criticism but feel encouraged. Such criticism betrays panic. The BJP, Congress, bureaucracy and mainstream media operate like one well-oiled machine controlled by vested interests that perpetuate the status quo alternating between Congress and BJP governments. Regional leaders can defeat them. This writer suggests how.

Media critics spread lies about the 1977 Janata experiment. The Morarji Desai government was infinitely better than its predecessor and successor governments. It was the Janata Party that failed. It failed because former Congressmen and Jan Sangh leaders conspired to destroy the Charan Singh faction. The immediate cause of the split was the unconstitutional expulsion of Raj Narain from the cabinet without a show cause notice. Chandrashekhar briefed Morarji about an alleged statement made by Raj Narain in Simla which provoked the PM to immediately sack him. The alleged statement was never made. Years later Mr. Shanta Kumar former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh confessed in his memoirs that he lied by making that allegation because Nanaji Deshmukh ordered him to do so. Many other conspiracies hatched by the Jan Sangh and former Congress leaders can be summoned but this is not the occasion to do it.

Madhu Limaye and George Fernandes have been credited by media with the fall of the Morarji government. Neither had the slightest inkling of what was happening. Raj Narain and this writer planned the fall of the government because Morarji had become factional leader acting unconstitutionally on the basis of false information. Both Limaye and Fernandes colluded with Chandrashekhar. They supported the Morarji government in parliament but scrambled across to Charan Singh when the government was about to fall. The dual membership issue was raised by this writer after discovering an RSS affidavit which claimed to be a political organization in order to avoid paying tax. Later Limaye took credit for the issue.

Regional leaders are painted corrupt. Every practicing politician in India is corrupt because all elections are fought with black money. Congress and BJP leaders are far more corrupt but are seldom described so by media. The issue of corruption can be addressed at the proper time. Immediately the regional parties must ensure an electoral challenge to the BJP. They will succeed if they expose the truth of the Partition and the betrayal of our written Constitution. They must bury the Congress legacy as Mahatma Gandhi proposed on his last day. The BJP is a muscular version of the Congress. Both are two sides of the same coin, backed by the same interests. Regional leaders must resolve to change not just the government but the system. If they show resolve they can succeed. An opportunity exists. They must seize it.