Janata Party information

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2024)

Janata Party
Abbreviation	JP
President	Navneet Chaturvedi
Founder	Jayaprakash Narayan
Founded	23 January 1977; 47 years ago (1977-01-23)
Merger of	Indian National Congress (O) Bharatiya Lok Dal Bharatiya Jana Sangh Samyukta Socialist Party Congress for Democracy
Youth wing	Janata Yuva Morcha
Women's wing	Janata Mahila Morcha
Ideology	Economic nationalism[1]
Political position	Big tent
Slogan	Janata se Janata ke liye जनता से जनता के लिए
ECI Status	Registered Unrecognised Political Party
Election symbol
Politics of India Political parties Elections

The Janata Party abbreviated JP, lit. People's Party) is an unrecognized political party in India.^[2] It was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress. In the 1977 general election, the party defeated the Congress and Janata leader Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress prime minister in independent modern India's history.^[3]

Raj Narain, a socialist leader, had filed a legal writ alleging electoral malpractice against Indira Gandhi in 1971. On 12 June 1975, Allahabad High Court found her guilty of using corrupt electoral practices in her 1971 election victory over Narain in the Rae Bareli constituency. She was barred from contesting any election for the next six years. Economic problems, corruption and the conviction of Gandhi led to widespread protests against the Congress (R) government, which responded by imposing a State of Emergency. The rationale was that of preserving national security. However, the government introduced press censorship, postponed elections and banned strikes and rallies. Opposition leaders such as Jivatram Kripalani, Jayaprakash Narayan, Anantram Jaiswal, Chandra Shekhar, Biju Patnaik, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, Raj Narain, Satyendra Narayan Sinha, Ramnandan Mishra and Morarji Desai were imprisoned,^[4] along with thousands of other political activists. When the State of Emergency was lifted and new elections called in 1977, opposition political parties such as the Congress (O), Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal as well as defectors from the Indian National Congress joined to form the Janata party, which won a sweeping majority in the Indian Parliament. Narain defeated Gandhi at Rae Bareli in those elections.

The new Janata-led government reversed many Emergency-era decrees and opened official investigations into Emergency-era abuses. Although several major foreign policy and economic reforms were attempted, continuous in-fighting and ideological differences made the Janata government unable to effectively address national problems. By mid-1979, Prime Minister Morarji Desai was forced to resign and his successor Chaudhary Charan Singh became Prime Minister of India. He remained in office for 23 days until Congress(I) withdrew support. Popular disenchantment with the political in-fighting and ineffective government led to the resurgence of Gandhi and her new Congress (I) party, which won the general election called in 1980. After Jaiprakash Bandhu now Navneet Chaturvedi is the president of Janata Party since November 2021.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]}