Mrs Gandhi’s opponents join forces

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 9

Mrs Gandhi’s opponents join forces

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi Leading Indian Opposition politicians and lawyers have launched a broadly based civil rights organisation led by Mrs Indira Gandhi’s arch political rival, Mr Jayaprakash Narayan.

The new organisation, known as the People’s Union for Civil Liljerties and Democratic Eights,; is drawn from almost every Opposition political party in India except the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India, which supports the Government.

Mr V. M. Tarkunde, a former Bombay High Court judge, told reporters that the union had been conceived as a first step in forming a United Democratic Opposition Partv.

Moves to unite India’s diverse Opposition groups have been intensified since the country was put under a state of internal emergency 16 months ago, but so far with limited success.

In a message sent from a hospital bed in Bombay, Mr Narayan, the 73-year-old ailing pacifist reformer, who is the new body’s president, said that its formation came "at a time when there is a complete dictatorship in the country, and when the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution are completely denied to the people.”

Mr Tarkunde said that the union would hold meetings in

(towns and villages throughout the country, its message being that civil liberties and democratic rights were being eroded under the present Government.

The union was formed at the end of a two-day conference held ■ by Opposition groups to oppose far-reaching Government proposals to amend the Constitution.

This was the first public meeting opposing the amendments to be permitted in Delhi since Mr s Gandhi declared the state of emergency. The delegates approved a document calling on Mrs Gandhi’s Government “to hold fair and free elections in an environment free of fear and intimidation,” before passing the amendments.

The document maintained that the proposed changes would take away the rights and powers of the President, the Legislatures, the judiciary, and the states, and transfer power to the Prime Minister “who emerges all-powerful and above the law.”

The Opposition meeting was held in the same building as a pro-Govemment convention on the constitutional changes, at which lawyers, professors, and politicans welcomed the proposals and said that they would set the pace for improving the socioeconomic lot of the poor.