Former Union minister Sharad Yadav launched the Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) party here on Friday, calling for a joint effort by the Opposition’s to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019.
The party has been formed by his supporters and Yadav will take the role of a patriarch as he is entangled in a legal war over the poll symbol with Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United).
Though he did not directly join it, his aides claimed that he was the brain behind the new outfit.
At the launch, Yadav said that if the BJP retains power in 2019, it would further curb constitutional rights of the people.
Citing the political turmoil in Karnataka, he said governor Vajubhai Vala has been acting at the behest of the saffron party. The BS Yeddyurappa government will lose the floor test tomorrow, he claimed.
The former minister also lashed out at the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar and said, he is sitting on the lap of the BJP that relied on ‘Hindu-Muslim’ issues to come to power.
He also appealed to all the opposition parties to work together to defeat the BJP in the next Lok Sabha poll.
Yadav, who had been a Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, drew a distinction between the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and the current dispensation.
‘Vajpayee resigned as prime minister after losing a trust motion by one vote while the same party is now crushing people’s mandate in the southern state even as the Congress-JD(S) combine had 13 more MLAs than it,’ he pointed out.
Rajya Sabha member M P Veerendra Kumar moved a social resolution which said the party would try to achieve the objective of justice, liberty, equality, fraternity, socialism and secularism. The party will later decide its strategy on contesting the Lok Sabha polls. HT
