After the Janata Party won the election despite initial private pessimism among most of its leaders, especially George Fernandes, aspirants from all factions got together and conspired to throw me out from my post. Explaining to reporters my removal from the post, Advani and Surendra Mohan, who, along with me, were original general secretaries, said that my appointment had been "temporary". That was not true. The conspiracy had been so complete that I learnt of my removal only from the newspapers the next day! But that is another story.
I
grew closer to Charan Singh and Raj Narain because of my previous personal rapport with Ram Manohar Lohia. I wrote columns for
Blitz Weekly and the
Illustrated Weekly of India. In
Blitz I broke the story of the RSS having given a sworn affidavit to the authorities stating it was a political organization in order to evade a tax of Rs 1 crore. That laid the foundation of the dual membership controversy that provided the excuse for the party to split. Eventually, Raj Narain was unconstitutionally expelled from the national executive for what he allegedly said about Morarji Desai in Shimla. Years later, Shanta Kumar of Himachal Pradesh admitted in a book he wrote that he had falsely implicated Raj Narain at the behest of Nanaji Deshmukh. Anyway, Raj Narain and I formulated the strategy to topple the Desai government, which I had concluded was incorrigible. A fortnight before the Janata government fell, I wrote in my
Blitz column precisely how and when it would fall.