Shekhar’s help sought to breath new life into Dal

BHUBANESWAR, March 8: Resentment in the State Janata Dal following party’s nation-wide debacle in the just concluded Lok Sabha election has taken the form of an appeal to socialist leader and former prime minister Chandra Shekhar for the revival of the party. Two senior Janata Dal leaders and former ministers Nalinikanta Mohanty and Prafulla today urged Shekhar to make a last ditch effort to revive the party by bringing all the erstwhile Dal leaders under one umbrella.

Reposing faith in the leadership ability of Shekhar, the two Dal leaders in a joint statement said, the former prime minister is the only socialist leader available who could revive the Janata Dal from the present morass. They were confident that Shekhar would be able to bring leaders like V P Singh, Devi Lal, H D Deve Gowda, Laloo Yadav, Sharad Yadav, Ajit Singh and Ramkrishna Hegde under one umbrella.

They admitted that the people had lost confidence in the Janata Dal in view of the repeated split in the party both at the national and thestate level. The outright rejection of the party in the Lok Sabha election clearly demonstrated that the party became irrelevant to the people, they maintained.

They hoped that the party could throw new light and touch the imagination of the people if the erstwhile Janata Dal leaders join hands under the leadership of Shekhar. They also suggested both the Congress and United Front to refrain from any attempt to form government at Centre.