In a meeting held on the initiative of famous Sarvodayi leader Dada Dharmadhikari, it was decided that such a candidate should be fielded in this by-election, who can give competition to the Congress and also become the face of all the parties involved in the movement. Leaders of most parties agreed with this and soon after, they went to meet Sharad Ji in jail. As he was from an engineering background, he didn't want to contest the election. At that time Sharad Ji refused everyone.

However, Dada Dharmadhikari brought JP Narayan's letter. Sharad Ji couldn't say no to that. At that time the students had united with the JP movement, so thinking that the election of the Student Union in the university should not go out of hand, Shara Ji agreed to contest the election and filled out the form while in jail. Against him, the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Prakash Chandra Sethi, was commanding the election campaign on behalf of Congress. But Sharad Ji's popularity was so high that Congressmen started feeling that his admiration was increasing due to him being in jail, so he was thus released from jail five days before the date of the election. Many of Sharad Ji's companions were still in jail. Yet Sharad Ji was not scared and won the election only after campaigning for a few days.

The Emergency imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi in the entire country in 1975 to suppress the People's Movement led by JP, eventually had to be removed and a general election was held in 1977. In this election, Sharad Ji was re-elected from Jabalpur in the storm of the Janata Party. But after the fall of the Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai, when general elections were held in the country, he had to face defeat. After that, Sharad Ji was in Jabalpur, and then Chaudhary Charan Singh called him and made him the national president of Yuva Lok Dal. During that time Sharad Ji travelled to the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and South India to strengthen the organization.

(Continued)