J P movement activists pledge to protect democratic values

Patna, June 26 (UNI) Activists of J P movement today reaffirmed their pledge to protect and promote democracy and vowed to thwart any move to establish autocratic rule as was done through imposition of Emergency in 1975.

Followers of late Jai Prakash Narain, the great exponent of democracy and socialism, congregated here to mark the proclamation of the Emergency rule by the then Congress Government at the Centre, and recalled the '' dark days'' when the press was gagged, all democratic institutions attacked and the people stripped off their democratic and human rights.

Inaugurating the meeting, state Agriculture Minister Naredra Singh admitted that even after more than three decades, aim of the total revolution launched by veteran socialist leader J P had not been achieved so far.

A few of the activists of the JP movement, who later went on to become mass leaders and also came into power, failed to take up the issues, raised by the JP in early seventees, when he had given a clarion call to dislodge the then Congress government for suppressing the democratic aspirations of the people of the country, he added.

''Leave aside the suffering of the common men, activists who devoted prime time of their life during the JP movement were subjected to face the humiliations and all kinds of disparities in the present set-up,'' he noted and assured that state government was taking sincere steps to change their lot.

''Instead of devoting their time to address the basic issues of the public importance, activists of the JP movement later got embroiled into the game of power politics,'' he lamented.

UNI