Minoo Masani, N. G. Ranga, Kanhaiyalal Munshi, H. M. Patel, General Cariappa, Narayan Dandekar joined Swatantra Party. Though the Congress constantly criticized it as “party of capitalists and princes”, in the very first general elections Party contested in 1967, it won 45 seats in the Lok Sabha. It became the largest opposition party. Out of these 45 candidates only eight were former princes, three were retired civil servants and as many as 34 were farmers living in rural areas. Unfortunately, five years later, on 25 December 1972, Rajaji passed away at the age of 94. His successor Minoo Masani also soon crossed ninety and due to illness was mostly inactive. Consequently, the Party lost its eminence and gradually became almost defunct. S. V. Raju who was deputy to Masani and the Editor of Freedom First, the weekly published by friends of the Party, wrote in an article, “Joshi has all the values our Party holds cardinal to its existence. He has one additional quality – mass appeal. We had many distinguished persons in the party but none of them had mass appeal. Even Rajaji and Masani did not have it. None of us could attract crowds in lakhs for our meetings.” On 6 November 1994, at the Convention of SS at Kasturchand Park in Nagpur, Joshi announced the formation of Swatantra Bharat Paksh (SBP). It was basically the revived form of old Swatantra Party. Party ran into several difficulties since inception. To be recognized by the Election Commission each political party had to file the affidavit declaring its allegiance to the values enshrined in the Constitution. Joshi did not file any such affidavit because due to the changes made to the constitution by Indira Gandhi the word “socialism” was added to its basic values and Joshi maintained that socialism was not acceptable to his Party. He even fought in the High Court over this issue; but that did not help. In absence of recognition by the Election Commission the Party could not get a common symbol 304
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
