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Jaipal Reddy to quit JD and join Congress

Former information and broadcasting minister and senior Janata Dal leader Jaipal Reddy today announced his decision to resign from the party and join the Congress. He defended his decision saying, ''Indian polity had become so sharply bi-polarised that Congress had emerged as the secular spearhead.''

''Support to Congress either from within or outside is a necessity at the moment,'' he said while talking to mediapersons and added that all secular forces would have to join hands with the Congress either before the general election or after.

Reddy deplored the disintegration of JD to the point of its having become ''a pale imitation of its original self on account of splits caused by clash of vaulting personal ambitions,'' and said a similar misfortune had befallen various formations of the third force although the Left parties had made ''valiant efforts to salvage it.'' A viable third force was not possible in the near future, according to him.

He recalled that his connection with the Congress party was severed in 1975 in the context of internal emergency. He had since stuck to JD and had been witness to its ''endless process of mergers, de-mergers and re-mergers.''

Stating that communalism posed the greatest challenge to the country's democracy and unity, Reddy said it was the Congress which, as the biggest secular organisation, could take on a ''communal'' party such as the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He said he would contest the Lok Sabha poll from the constituency decided upon by the Congress.

UNI

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