New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will witness the entry of a new, hi-tech generation into the state politics this year as a group of IIT-Kanpur graduates have come together to fight the polls with a resolve to clean up the "dirty politics in the country".
The Bharat Punarnirman Dal or India Regeneration Group comprises a group of young IITians, who have decided to contest at least 20-25 seats in the UP Assembly elections next month.
"Enough of drawing room and coffee-house discussions. It is time qualified professionals rise to the occasion and make an effort to put the country's politics on the right track," news agency IANS quoted the Dal's founder president, Ajit Shukla, as saying.
Shukla and his colleagues floated the party in Delhi last December. Since then they have also roped in young people from other professional fields like medicine, law, humanities and social research.
"We feel the time is running out and we must get down to real business," Shukla says. "We had been debating over the question for quite some time," he claims.
The political first-timers talk business-like when they explain their poll plans. Shukla, for instance, has decided to contest from Lucknow's prominent Cantonment Assembly constituency, and is ready to take on some political bigwigs. Similarly, 10 other IIT graduates will take on some top politicians across the state.
A 2002 batch pass-out from IIT- Mumbai and a resident of Deoria district in Eastern UP, Shukla says he decided to plunge into politics as he felt that the time has come to "rid Uttar Pradesh politics of its ills."
Shukla's comrade-in-arms Omendra Pratap Singh, an IIT-Kanpur passout, is equally enthusiastic about the venture. "We are going to leave no stone unturned to put across our message to the electorate. I am sure people are also sick of the general degeneration in politics and would welcome a positive change," he told IANS.
Omendra left a plum job with Tata Consultancy Services to join politics. "I thought I was cut out for something more meaningful, something for the larger good of the people."
He will seek election to Kanpur's Arya Nagar Assembly seat. Similarly, Punit Nath, a practising doctor, proposes to contest the General Ganj seat in Kanpur.
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