March 27, 1980, Forty Years Ago: RSS In Assam

The Jana Sangh faction took the first formal step towards splitting the Janata Party with L K Advani calling a convention on April 5 and 6 in Delhi of those “who regard the dual membership issue as a bogey and who would like to see the party function as an effective instrument for the achievement of Janata Party’s aims”. The Janata Party chief, Chandra Shekhar, described the Jana Sangh faction’s decision as “unfortunate” and refused to say anything further. The party general secretary, R K Hegde, said the decision to call the convention was “blatantly unauthorised”.

Tarapur Plant

The government has been obliged to reduce the level of power generation in the Tarapur atomic plant owing to non-arrival of scheduled enriched uranium from the United States, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told the Lok Sabha. She told A K Roy that against 2,294 million generation units in 1976, the output last year was only 1,958 million generation units. Asked if efforts had been made to produce enriched uranium within the country or to procure it from any other source, Mrs Gandhi said as long as the cooperation agreement of 1963 subsisted, the US was obliged to make enriched uranium available.