1. Such tactical adjustment was first made (with the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, now BJP) in the aftermath of the Chinese aggression of India in 1962/63, when Dr. Rammanohar Lohia dubbed the Congress party as " a party of national disgrace", since it could not save our frontiers, and asked for a tactical adjustment among all patriotic parties to fight the Congress unitedly in the ensuing elections.

2. In the general elections to the Lok Sabha and to the State Assemblies in 1967, it was this tactical adjustment that enabled the non-Congress parties to defeat the Congress in nine States of the union, and almost defeat it in the Lok Sabha. The non-Congress governments that were formed in all the states where the Congress was defeated were coalition governments in which the then Jan Sangh (now BJP), the Communist and the Socialists were partners.

3. In the 1971 general elections to parliament there was a grand alliance to confront the Congress, in which the Socialist Party, Jan Sangh, Congress(O) and Choudhury Charan Singh's Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) came on one platform.

4. In 1975, Mrs. Gandhi declared ... Emergency. The entire Opposition came under attack and some even from her own party were arrested and detained. It was then that Jayaprakash Narayan united all the opposition parties in the country to lead the fight against the Emergency. When elections were announced by Mrs. Gandhi, he demanded that the Socialist Party of which I was then the President, Congress(O), BKD and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh unite into one party. ... The Janata Party came into being.

5. In 1989, the present day Janata Dal had seat adjustments with the BJP. Mr. V.P. Singh became prime minister with the support of the BJP. The BJP and the Marxists were taken into confidence on all issues which the V.P. Singh government proposed to legislate on, and on other matters, including appointments etc., the government wished to make. This was done as and when necessary, and one specific day of the week set apart for the purpose the leaders of the BJP and the Left parties met at the Prime Minister's House for discussion and dinner.

6. The trade union organisations of the CPI (Marxist), CPI and the Janata Dal-Hind Mazdoor Sabha have a permanent standing committee of which the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, led by the RSS-BJP, is an integral part.

And for the record, the Praja Socialist Party, of which Prof. Madhu Dandavate was then a leader, was able to get some of its members elected to the Bombay Municipal Corporation by making an alliance with the Shiv Sena - Mrs. Pramila Dandavate being one of the members elected through that alliance.