New Delhi: New Delhi: In a shot in the arm for Bharatiya Janata Part (BJP), former Union Minister V C Shukla today (Mar 13, 2004) merged his short-lived Rashtriya Janatantrik Dal with it and the converted Congress leader openly admitted that the Emergency, during which he was a prominent player, was a "mistake".

The saffron party also netted another significant catch when former All India Congress Committee (AICC) member and son of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Rafiq Sadiq joined it describing the Congress-People's Democratic Party (PDP) Government in the State as "anti-people and anti-democratic".

BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu handed over the membership slips to both the leaders at the party headquarters. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and State unit President Nand Kumar Sai were also present.

Welcoming both into the party, Naidu said the exodus of "traditional Congressmen" such as Shukla, Sadiq, Bangarappa, Laxman Singh and members of the Nehru-Gandhi family into BJP showed that they had lost faith in the Congress leadership.

"This election will mark the ultimate decline of the Congress party from the national horizon," he declared.

Answering queries, Shukla, who had floated the Dal after the Sharad Pawar-Sangma split in the Nationalist Congress party (NCP), said he was joining BJP as getting a symbol for his party for the coming polls was posing a problem. He also recalled his long-standing "friendship" with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee since the time they joined Parliament together in 1957.

"The Emergency was a mistake. Even Indira Gandhi admitted it before her death," Shukla, who was a close associate of the late Sanjay Gandhi, said in response to a question.

Asked whether he was now willing to work under the same people whom he had jailed during the Emergency, Shukla said, "I did not arrest them in the first place. Secondly, nobody works under anybody. We are all colleagues in a party and work as a team."

Apparently allaying apprehensions that he may interfere in the State politics, Shukla said he had been a Central Minister for long and would like to play a role in national politics. Asked why it took him five years to appreciate NDA's "good governance", he said, "I have been in Congress for almost four decades. I am a senior person and I cannot take any impulsive decision. It has to be a well-thought out act."

Shukla met Vajpayee earlier in the day prior to his joining the party.

Recalling that Shukla's group had garnered about seven per cent of the total votes in Chhattisgarh during the recent Assembly elections, Naidu expressed hope that his joining would strengthen the saffron party.

Sadiq, who was vice-chairman of the PCC poll campaigning committee till last week and earlier president of Srinagar District Congress Committee, regretted that Congress, which was once dominated by stalwarts like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel and others, "has now turned out to be an outfit of self-seekers, rank opportunists, sycophants and flunkies.

"Devoid of any ideology, it lacks a programme of social and national reconstruction. There is no inner party democracy. Decisions are forced down the throat of dedicated Congressmen," he said in a statement.