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December 27, 1997

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Former UP Congress chief joins hands with Mulayam



Congress stalwart and former Pradesh Congress Committee president Balram Singh Yadav today quit the party to join the Samajwadi Party, bringing an end to his 17-year-long fierce political rivalry with SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The already battered Uttar Pradesh Congress thus suffered another severe jolt.

A beaming Defence Minister and SP president Mulayam Singh Yadav hugged his old friend of college days, saying, ''Balram and I had been in rival political camps but continued to be good friends.

"Balram Singh Yadav's joining the party will definitely make the Samajwadi Party more strong and we will run the organisation as a family,'' he added.

Balram Singh Yadav said he was very sad at ending his 38-year-old association with the Congress. At the same time, he felt happy to join the Samajwadi Party which is ''the only political outfit in the country to combat effectively the communal designs of the Bharatiya Janata Party''.

Blaming the entire Congress leadership ''for the sordid state in which the party finds itself,'' he said the 112-year-old party ''had lost its original path and the capability to keep the country united."

According to the former Union minister, maintaining the unity and integrity of the country was the biggest challenge before the political parties and the people.

"It is in the interests of the country and for fighting communal forces that Mulayam Singh Yadav and I decided to sink our differences and join hands,'' he added.

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