Wrangle over Urdu’s official status in the UP Assembly, new problems for the SVD

Aug 1967

A new conundrum was soon to present itself in the SVD wrangle: the vote for Urdu’s the status as the second official language. The agenda had been appended to the 19-point programme the party constituents of the SVD had agreed on, but the Jan Sangh dissented at the time of the vote. The party was now threatening to pull its ministers from the coalition if the the rest of the constituents went ahead with this. On the other hand, Charan Singh’s Jan Congress threatened to resign from their ministries if the coalition doesn’t give minorities the fair treatment they are due. The Jan Sangh got their way. Following this, Charan Singh wrote to the Secretary of the SVD Coordination Committee, asking to be relieved of his duties as the Jan Sangh was overstepping altogether too much for the compact between the parties to work. In the department bodies under their charge, the Jan Sangh ministers were appointing men exclusively of their party. This prompted the Committee to pass a new common code of conduct for all the parties in the alliance as well as the members of the government, effectively pacifying Singh’s plea and affirming their support in his leadership. Charan Singh was not going to be a lame duck chief minister, and the threat of resignation allowed him to assert his power vis-a-vis his interlocutors.