It was a dispiriting beginning. On a wintery afternoon in early 1988, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, and some of his comrades-in-arms, all of whom had either recently quit or had been suspended from the Congress party, drove to Baraut in western Uttar Pradesh in a Jonga to address the first meeting of their fledgling outfit, the Jan Morcha.
Satya Pal Malik, then barely in his early 40s, was an upcoming Jat leader from the area and had taken care of the arrangements. As Singh, Arun Nehru, Ram Dhan and Malik sat in the Jonga, which Malik owned, the sight before them